Alabama · Striped bass and hybrids
Can you keep a striped bass and hybrids in Alabama?
Yes, with limits
salt water
Open year-roundSize
16 inches and up
total length
Daily bag
2
per person per day
In salt water: sixteen inches and two a day.
fresh water
Open year-roundSize
No size limit stated
total length
Daily bag
15
per person per day
In fresh water there is no minimum length, but fifteen a day covering striped bass and hybrids together — and no more than five of those may be over 22 inches. The Chattahoochee, Lewis Smith, Yates, Thurlow and Lake Martin each carry their own rules.
What we left out on purpose
- Alabama measures sheepshead in fork length (12 inches) where the Carolinas use total length (14 inches). The registry carries the measuring method with every rule so the numbers cannot be compared as if they meant the same thing.
- The 10 black bass a day is a shared pool across largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, Alabama, shoal and the former redeye species, with no more than five smallmouth inside it. The registry records limits per species, so that number is the shared pool rather than a per-species allowance.
- Catfish has no daily limit in the ordinary sense: unlimited under 34 inches, exactly one over. No figure is published in the bag column for that reason; the rule is in the note.
- Alabama names many further waters with their own black bass, crappie and striped bass rules — Harris Reservoir, Lake Jackson, Weiss, Lewis Smith, Yates, Thurlow, Lake Martin and the Chattahoochee under a reciprocal agreement with Georgia. Only Guntersville is carried here, because it is the only Alabama water this site reports on.
- The reef species — groupers, amberjack, triggerfish — carry footnotes in ADCNR’s table about federal seasons and a reef fish aggregate. Those seasons are set federally and change within the year; only size and daily limit are published here, not the season.
- The digest these tables come from was the 2025–2026 edition at retrieval. Alabama’s rule year starts on September 1, so a new edition was due within weeks.
Other species in Alabama
Where to try today
- Lake Guntersville 5/10 · Decent