HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Redfish cruise the shallow waters of Lowcountry marshes feeding on crabs and other marine life, their tails cutting the surface like a shark’s fin. Anglers reel in some 2 million annually. The excitement of “sight fishing” makes them South Carolina’s most popular saltwater sport fish.

But Matt Perkinson, a wildlife biologist who works in Fishing Outreach and Education in the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Marine Resources Division in Charleston, says redfish, also known as red drum, reds or spottail bass, are “being loved to death.”

Two recent studies, one regional and the other specific to South Carolina, found the number of breeding adults at their lowest levels in decades, SCDNR says.

SCDNR officials will make recommendations to the South Carolina Legislature, which convened Jan. 13, to consider reductions in bag and boat limits for the state’s most popular sport fish because of population declines caused by overfishing and habitat loss, Perkinson says. It follows months of stock assessments, surveys and public input.

If new harvest limits are implemented, ripples will be widely felt around the Beaufort and Hilton Head areas, where anglers wading into the marsh after reds or casting from a boat near shore is a common sight. It will also affect a thriving coastal charter industry, where redfish are often the No. 1 target.

Anglers who catch redfish might not even notice the problem, Perkinson says, because they are still catching fish. But areas that once had schools of redfish in the hundreds, for example, are seeing numbers in the 30s to 40s per school.

“We’re taking too much out of the water faster than they can produce and the size of the population out there is not large enough to replenish itself and be sustainable,” Perkinson said.

Most people fish from shore and catch smaller, young fish that inhabit the smaller tidal creeks in salt marshes, SCDNR says. Larger adults hang out in the open ocean but move into the mouths of estuaries to spawn in August and September. South Carolina’s oldest recorded red drum was 41 years old. The state record was a 75-pound fish caught in 1965 in Murrells Inlet south of Myrtle Beach.

SCDNR discourages the targeting of larger fish during spawning because they produce more eggs making them critically important. Minimizing the time fish remain out of the water before they are released markedly improves their chance of survival, SCDNR says. So does holding them horizontally, with wet hands, and using a rubber-coated net.

Fishing is active year-round, but fall is considered the best season.

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