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Red Snapper Season, Alabama High School Cycling League

Red snapper
Red snapper

Charter fishermen in Alabama are gearing up for a longer than usual red snapper season.

Thanks to a recent decision from NOAA’s Fisheries Division, recreational fishermen and commercial charter fishermen have separate seasons this year. Private anglers will only be allowed to fish in federal waters for ten days starting June 1. Charter captains' season will run 44 days, from June 1 to mid-July. Last year, both groups were lumped together for a nine day season.

Tom Ard is with the Charter Fisherman's Association. He says the big gap between the commercial and recreational seasons comes down to differing laws policing state waters.

“For instance, Florida will have a 70 day red snapper season this year. Louisiana will have a 270 day red snapper season this year. Texas is 365 days a year. So what that does is, it takes fish out of the total liable catch, your quota.”

Those state seasons are only open for private fishermen. Commercial fishermen with federal licenses can't fish state waters once the federal fishery is closed.

Sunday marked the close of the first season of the Alabama High School Cycling League.  Two hundred sixty high school students competed throughout the season in races across the state.

Eddie Freyer* is the league director. He says an athlete’s class determines how long their race will be…

“The races are a mountain bike race, a course that we’ve laid out, typically our courses are four and a half to six miles in length per lap and depending on the category that the kids are racing in, whether its freshman, sophomore, JV or varsity they could do anywhere from one to four laps on that course.”

Freyer* says the establishment of the High School Cycling League was important because the League of American Bicyclists ranked Alabama number fifty on its list of Bicycle Friendly States this year. The state championship race was held at Muny Sokol Park in Northport.

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