Can you keep a black drum in Louisiana?

A slot means the fish must fall between those two numbers. Shorter than 16 inches goes back, and so does longer than 27.

A slot of 16 to 27 inches, five a day, and no more than one of those may be over 27 inches.

LDWF source page

What we left out on purpose

• A summarised source still gave the old speckled trout rule of 12 inches and 25 fish. LDWF changed it, and the 2026 guide reads 13 to 20 inches with fifteen a day and no more than two over 20. The figures here come from that guide, downloaded and read directly, not from any summary.
• Louisiana names roughly a dozen individual waters with their own black bass and crappie rules — the Lower Atchafalaya Basin, Toledo Bend, Caddo Lake, False River, Poverty Point, Eagle Lake, Bussey Brake and others, some effective 1 August 2026. None of those waters is reported on by this site, so only the statewide rule is carried. Anglers on a named water need the guide.
• The hundred-fish catfish limit is an aggregate across blue, channel and flathead together. The registry records limits per species, so each catfish page shows the shared pool rather than its own allowance, and each note says so.
• Paddlefish is left out. Its limit is measured in lower jaw fork length, which this schema does not carry, and harvest is prohibited below the saltwater line and in the boundary waters with Texas anyway.
• Sheepshead is not in LDWF’s saltwater table. The guide states that species not listed have no size limit, so publishing a number for it would be inventing one — it is left out rather than shown as unlimited.
• Lake Pontchartrain is brackish and tidal. Which of the two rule sets applies to a given spot depends on where LDWF draws the saltwater line, and that boundary was not read. Both sets are published here separately rather than merged.