Once small pods or individual reds had been the norm, but management made it possible to fish vast schools of the bronze beauties sometimes. The next step, hatchery production and stocking of fry, especially redfish fry, really took Middle Coast fishing from being in real jeopardy to being good, even great. Then Mother Nature raised the ante: Freezes in the winters of 19 killed millions of game fish along the coast, creating the right atmosphere of concern for tighter regulations, including 10-fish limits, and a 15-inch minimum size limit for trout, and slot limits for redfish. That all changed with the help of far-thinking groups like the Gulf Coast Conservation Association, which got trout and reds reclassified as game fish and lobbied the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to impose the first meaningful size and bag limits. In those days, they were still commercial fish, and commercial fishermen were using gillnets and trotlines to harvest them by the truckload.
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