Striped bass (rockfish) size limit in Maryland

A slot means the fish must fall between those two numbers. Shorter than 19 inches goes back, and so does longer than 24.

Closes each year Catch-and-release only, no harvest, January 1 through April 30

A 19-to-24-inch slot, one fish a day, open to harvest May 1 through July 31 and September 1 through December 5. Catch-and-release continues through the rest of the year except August, when the whole Bay closes outright — no targeting at all, not even catch-and-release. Named spawning rivers (Choptank, Chester, Manokin, Nanticoke, Patuxent, Transquaking, Wicomico) and the Upper Bay/Susquehanna Flats are closed to striped bass entirely from March 1 through May 31, inside what is already a catch-and-release period everywhere else in the Bay.

MD DNR source page

A slot means the fish must fall between those two numbers. Shorter than 28 inches goes back, and so does longer than 31.

The same coastwide 28-to-31-inch slot used up and down the Atlantic coast under the ASMFC's management addendum — one fish a day, open all year. Non-offset circle hooks are required when fishing with bait.

MD DNR source page

Landlocked striped bass stocked in reservoirs and lakes carry a looser rule than the tidal Bay: 18 inches, 2 a day, but only one of the two may be over 30 inches.

MD DNR source page

What we left out on purpose

• This page covers Maryland's tidal, estuarine and Atlantic species only. Maryland also regulates largemouth and smallmouth bass, walleye, yellow perch, chain pickerel and catfish in the same Chesapeake Bay and Tributaries table — those are freshwater and tidal-freshwater rules, out of scope for a silo that otherwise compares coastal species across states, and are not carried here.
• American lobster is left out. Maryland measures it by carapace length (3⅜ to 5¼ inches), a method this schema does not carry — every other species here is measured by total length.
• Grouper and snapper are published as combined, aggregate limits across every species in each group, exactly as Maryland's own table does — not broken out species by species.
• Where a species carries the identical rule on both the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean pages published by MD DNR, it is carried here once as 'statewide tidal waters' rather than as two duplicate regions.
• Sharks and tilefish are referenced by MD DNR's own tables as having further specialized regulations elsewhere; neither is carried here.