The state’s rockfish season will start in April as scheduled, after it was almost derailed this week by a legislative committee’s hold on the season, briefly causing chaos among charter boats that had booked customers for April 1.
But the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review granted final approval of the regulations just in time Wednesday, allowing the season to begin as scheduled, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
The hold-up came when Del. Jay Jacobs (R-Upper Shore), a member of the committee, raised a concern with the new regulations, leading Del. Sandy Rosenberg (D-Baltimore City), the committee chair, to request a hold on the regulations. It came as state officials faced a Wednesday morning deadline to publish the new rules, if they were to take effect in April.
But Rosenberg said he lifted the stay after a conversation with DNR, during which the agency pledged to study the impact of the regulations, which open a new recreational fishery for striped bass in April, but close the fishery for the entire month of August.
In a letter to Jacobs and Rosenberg, Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz pledged to develop by November “an economic impact study to analyze the recreational fishing sector this year and understand more about the impacts this regulatory shift may have on the businesses that support and participate in the recreational striped bass fishery.”
Kurtz vowed that the department will “continue to pursue means to regulate the charter boat community separately from the remaining recreational community.” He also proposed a pilot program that would “assist charter boat captains in the upper Chesapeake Bay and target invasive catfish during the month of August.”
“By paying the normal rate for a 1⁄2 or full-day charter trip, we could attract new sectors of the public to learn about fishing, gain experience from a knowledgeable captain and crew, and remove more invasive species,” Kurtz wrote.
The department could use federal funding that it recently received to reduce blue catfish populations in the Chesapeake Bay, Kurtz wrote.
Jacobs, who asked for the pause on the regulations, argued that the monthlong closure in August could deal a significant blow to charter fishing boats. Charter boats are already struggling, Jacobs said, because a previous rule change prevented them from keeping more than one fish per passenger.
In the previous two years in Maryland, all targeting of striped bass in the bay was prohibited from April 1 to May 15, and from July 16 to July 31, with additional closure areas and periods in specific tributaries.
The agency made the change because hot water temperatures in August are more likely to stress the fish and result in mortality. The prior protections in April had been aimed at protecting fish swimming up the rivers to spawn.
“DNR is implementing the seasonal shift to enable anglers to catch-and-release striped bass in April when water temperatures are cooler, while closing the month of August for striped bass fishing when hot water temperatures make striped bass more likely to be accidentally killed by hook-and-line fishermen,” read a news release from the agency.
The changes also “simplify the recreational and charter boat seasons,” said Kate Charbonneau, DNR’s assistant secretary of aquatic resources. “We are allowing for more access to recreational fishing opportunities without increasing mortality or total fish removed.”
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by Christine Condon, Maryland Matters
March 12, 2026
Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.