Following worrying rockfish population data, Maryland looks to cancel spring trophy season for 2024

After five straight years of troubling data on the population of young rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland officials plan to enact emergency regulations canceling this spring’s trophy season for recreational anglers. The rules would eliminate the once exciting two weeks each spring when anglers targeted large fish swimming up the bay to spawn. But this period had been delayed from April into May in recent years in an effort to protect the spawning fish, which diminished its allure.