If your texas limit is 4 within 9 miles and fed. snapper season is open.

can you have four snapper total, or 2 fed. snapper and 4 state water snapper? i am assuming 4 total

4 total

If you are in Federal waters and the season is open, you can have two. If you are in Federal waters and the season is closed, you better not have any onboard, even if you caught them in state waters. Similarly, if you caught 4 in state waters and then moved offshore into Federal waters, you could get a citation.

I was out last year about 25 miles when the snapper season was closed. I was catching snapper and throwing them back. When I got back to the dock, there was a boat that was cleaning snapper. They were around the same rig that I was at. They said that the TPW stopped them looked at their catch and said have a good day. The next day I decided to keep my limit (2) of snapper and I was also stopped by TPW. They knew that I was outside the state waters, but said have a nice day. I think that there is an unspoken rule with TPW that they ignore the federal water rules when different than state.

That might be changing, now that the state has filed a law suite against the Government about the catch limits.

Pretty risky. 2 snapper is just not worth the risk to me.

Yes I agree, I was very nervous. It was my older brother that was on the boat with me that insisted, was trying to talk him out of it, but older brothers know best! LOL.