Saltwater Anglers Urged to Participate in AL Creel Survey

By DAVID RAINER, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

If you have an Alabama saltwater fishing license or are on the saltwater registry, don’t be surprised if you get a call with a caller ID of the University of South Alabama (USA) or Alabama Creel, AL Creel for short. The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ (ADCNR) Marine Resources Division (MRD) has partnered with USA to conduct a portion of the AL Creel survey that provides the data needed for fisheries management decisions.

Kevin Anson, MRD Director, said the creel survey is very close to the survey methodology used by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries for its saltwater creel survey (LA Creel), which began in 2012.  Anson hopes AL Creel will be accredited for official use by NOAA Fisheries, aka the National Marine Fisheries Service, just as LA Creel was accredited. This new effort is an extension of previous surveys done by MRD to determine the number of anglers and number of trips (effort) taken in Alabama waters and in the Alabama artificial reef zones.

“Actually, we have been doing the effort portion of the survey for a little while,” Anson said. “We were calling licensed anglers for their trip information on a weekly basis. We started that in 2024. Then in 2025, we continued the weekly phone calling of randomly selected anglers from our license list and added a dockside survey.”

The dockside surveys are completed at publicly accessible boat ramps, marinas and shore fishing sites to get catch data from anglers.

“We multiply the estimated number of trips by the estimated catch from each of the different sampling areas and the modes of fishing,” Anson said. “We have it broken out by anglers fishing from boats, shore and state-licensed charter boats. We are not sampling federally licensed charter boats at this point. Those vessel landings are captured under a separate federal program.

Anson said AL Creel is being implemented side by side with NOAA Fisheries’ federal recreational angler survey in order to compare estimates.

“We are still conducting the federal dockside survey to get the catch information they need to go with their effort information that they collect through a mail survey. They send out effort surveys asking about trip information over a two-month period.” 

Anson said, although NOAA compensates MRD for doing the dockside survey, it is a drain on MRD resources. He hopes the AL Creel survey will replace the federal surveying effort.

“The two-month period to recall fishing trip information is reduced to 12 days in AL Creel, so it is believed this will reduce errors associated with recall,” Anson said. “In addition, AL Creel contacts the licensed anglers by phone whereas NOAA primarily uses a mailing list of valid post office addresses. 

“Until we can get the AL Creel survey certified by NOAA as a statistically valid means of gathering recreational fisheries data, it causes us to have more folks in the field doing both programs,” he said. “It’s also burdensome on the anglers to get questions from two surveys. Hopefully, we can make that transition this year.”

The federal survey apparatus, Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), has suffered reliability issues with evidence of overestimating the recreational harvest on a regular basis. An internal study was done to look at changing the order of the questions. Depending on the state surveyed and the time of year, the study showed MRIP might be overestimating harvest by more than 40%. 

Anson said NOAA has implemented that question order change in the current survey, but now it has to go back and change those effort estimates and subsequent catch and harvest information from past years all the way to 1981.

“Now they have to take the new effort estimates and multiply them by the catch information for those years to get new catch information,” he said. “Then that has to be taken through for new stock assessments for various species and determine new catch level recommendations.” 

Anson said it may be a while before anglers will see changes, if any, to the federal seasons, sizes and bag limits. The stock assessments will have to be rerun and then go through the Gulf Council (https://gulfcouncil.org/) process and through NOAA to determine new catch advice using the adjusted data.

“That could result in different management,” he said. “That could result in a reduced fishing season or an extended fishing season. Most often, it results in a reduced season because with less fish being caught, the (computer) model interprets that as the fish stock is not as productive. Even with less effort, that may not compensate one-to-one with the number of fish you are allowed to catch.”

The obvious goal of the AL Creel survey is to receive NOAA accreditation, just like our fellow Gulf state Louisiana, and be able to use it for federal and state management.

“We’re following the survey methodology that Louisiana uses,” Anson said. “Louisiana uses this survey to manage its fisheries. It is certified by NOAA as the acceptable recreational data for Louisiana. We anticipate we will get certified, but we still have to go through the process. We are using our license database for saltwater anglers, and we have contracted the University of South Alabama as the entity that is going to conduct the AL Creel recreational interviews.”

Anson urges everyone who gets a call to participate in the survey to assist MRD with collecting the best data, which it needs for management decisions. That will ensure species sustainability and allow anglers the most access to the fisheries.

“We ask everyone who is contacted to participate, whether you fish a little or fish a lot,” he said. “We’re sampling a portion of the entire license database, so we need to get a good idea about who is fishing and who is not fishing. Those people who don’t fish are equally as important as those who do fish. When you average them all out, we need to know that information.” 

Anson also provided an update to the 2025 red snapper season, indicating anglers took advantage of the reopening of the season to seven days a week on August 29 to run through December 31. The preliminary estimate from Snapper Check indicated 623,029 pounds were harvested, about 40,000 pounds below the quota of 664,552 pounds.

“We had a spike in effort the last few weeks of December,” Anson said. “It was warm and the seas were calm. People took advantage of it. Compared to 2023 and 2024, that spike in 2025 is the most pronounced by far.”  Weekly harvest updates are provided online throughout the season (www.outdooralabama.com/2025-red-snapper-landings-summary).

Right now, most anglers are focusing on sheepshead, a species that has become increasingly popular. Because of the increased fishing pressure, the daily bag limit was reduced to eight fish per angler last year.

“Sheepshead fishing has been pretty good the last few weeks,” Anson said. “The population appears to be in good shape. Based on catches and other data, the bag limit appears to have helped stabilize the fishery.”

###