New Jersey · Bluefish
Can you keep a bluefish in New Jersey?
Yes, with limits
private and shore-based anglers
Open year-roundSize
No size limit stated
total length
Daily bag
5
per person per day
No minimum size, 5 a day, open all year. Anglers aboard a for-hire boat get a bigger bag — see the other region on this page.
for-hire vessel anglers
Open year-roundSize
No size limit stated
total length
Daily bag
7
per person per day
Same no-minimum rule, but customers aboard a for-hire vessel may keep 7 a day instead of 5.
What we left out on purpose
- This page carries the seven species on NJDEP's own 'Attention Anglers' quick-reference card — the document the agency itself hands anglers first. The full 'Marine Digest' (a much longer document) covers further species — scup, sheepshead, black drum, spot and others among them — that are not carried here. The card explicitly calls itself a summary and not the full law.
- Shark is left out. NJDEP's own card gives only a vessel limit (1 fish per vessel) and defers size, season and gear entirely to NMFS federal rules — no state-published size exists to carry.
- Hard clam and blue crab appear on the same official card but are shellfish and crustaceans, not fish, and are left out along with every other state on this site.
- dep.nj.gov sits behind an Imperva bot-check that blocks direct fetches (curl, WebFetch) even with a live session's cookies. The PDF here was retrieved through a same-origin fetch() executed inside an authenticated browser tab — the same technique would work for the full Marine Digest if a future session wants to expand this state's coverage.
