Mississippi · Flounder
Can you keep a flounder in Mississippi?
Yes, with limits
salt water
Open year-roundSize
12 inches and up
total length
Daily bag
10
per person per day
Twelve inches and ten a day, open all year. The most permissive flounder rule of the five: Alabama closes November, Louisiana closes mid-October to the end of November, North Carolina is shut entirely and South Carolina starts at 16 inches.
What we left out on purpose
- Border waters follow an unusual rule that has no field in this schema: for black bass, bream, crappie and striped bass in waters touched by the state line, the limit is that of the adjacent state or Mississippi’s, whichever is greater. Anyone fishing the Mississippi River or Pickwick Lake needs both sets of rules.
- MDWFP’s own page links the April 2023 revision of the creel rule, while a May 2024 revision "with CHANGES" sits on the same server. Both were read; the statewide creel table is identical in the two, so nothing here depends on which is current. Anything beyond that table should be checked against the newer file.
- Mississippi sets freshwater length limits lake by lake rather than statewide — Arkabutla, Enid, Sardis, Grenada, Eagle Lake and others each have their own for crappie and bass. None of those waters is reported on by this site, so only the statewide creel figures are carried.
- Paddlefish is left out. Mississippi measures it from the front of the eye to the fork of the tail, a method this schema does not carry, and fish over 30 inches must be released.
- The reef species — snappers, groupers, amberjack, triggerfish — carry aggregate limits and federal seasons set by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, which change within the year. Only size and bag are published here, not the season.
- Sturgeon of every species may not be taken or possessed in any Mississippi water. It is left out rather than listed as a zero.
Other species in Mississippi
- Spotted seatrout (speckled trout)
- Red drum (redfish)
- Sheepshead
- Black drum
- Florida pompano
- Tripletail
- Cobia
- Spanish mackerel
- King mackerel
- Gray snapper (mangrove snapper)
- Greater amberjack
- Gray triggerfish
- Black bass (largemouth, spotted, smallmouth)
- Crappie (black and white)
- Striped bass and hybrids
- Bream (bluegill, redear and other sunfish)
- Sauger
- Walleye
- Alligator gar
- Catfish