Thank you Bobby....
Yes my name is james wheeler, and I currently operate Badfish a 40' Ocean Yacht's Super Sport. Unfortunately, we have no openings until august 10, well after snapper close. I can get you lined up with people I trust however, if youre still interested . From 27 -43 ft I know someone good boats whose crews would love taking a small group like yourself. PM me if you still need help.
Now for the legalese and other lawyerly discussion:
So the difference between state water and federal water Snapper or obviously the state water Snapper ever caught with in 9.1 miles of the beach and federal waters Snapper are caught further than that threshold, as well as having closed seasons and more stringent rules
.... For each type of fishing that we do in federal waters, while operating For Hire, which is a commercial endeavor, we are required to have a permit. In our area to run a charter boat I have to have three different permits, one is Coastal migratory, one is federal reef fish(both of those are limited entry, and designated charter/headboat , and setting limitations of the amount of people who can fish), Atlantic wahoo/ Dorado for charter/headboat, and finally a HMS (highly migratory species) permit. The letter to are easy to attain and very cheap, but the first two because they're limited entry, are extremely expensive and create an artificial Market that keeps going up. To get our permits squared away it was over $35,000. But having all those different permits allows me to do the type of fishing I like to do....
So what does all that mean, one of the things that means that I'm highly regulated and that there are very strict rules I must follow. Getting caught breaking the rules can toss me that license that I already spent the money on and caused me the ability to go and legally fish the waters that I want to be in. So your state water Snapper boats it's not so much that they have to have a special license what it is is a lack of license. They choose not to fish in federal waters for reef fish by not having a Gulf of Mexico reef fish permit. Is save them a lot of money and if benefits a lot of the smaller boats because they can go in the winter time where there's a lot of calm days if they stay in shallow. However during the busy season I wouldn't personally be able to do it because it just about requires you to completely stay in shore of the Nine Mile Line which to me isn't very exciting most of the year. There are a couple of boats that switch back and forth between having their permits and transferring purring them to another vessel but that's a whole different conversation cuz there's a whole set of rules just to do that. It's not very probable that anyone would be able to do that with their company unless they were very well-established and had a fleet of boats
there are a few of the guys that remain non federally licensed that fo a great job as well, if you are really wanting state water snapper, I'd suggest capt. Butch Findley, one of my idols growing up, who puts on a really good show on the el Gatos loco, if I'm remembering his current boat correctly
http://www.texascoastalfishing.com/
