Black sea bass size limit in Virginia

Closes each year Closed January 1 through May 10 — the season runs May 11 to December 31

13 inches, 15 a day, open May 11 through December 31 — one inch smaller and a longer season than Maryland's 12.5-inch/May-1 rule for the same species. Federal waters may run different regulations under NMFS.

VMRC source page

What we left out on purpose

• A full 'Virginia Trophy Season' for striped bass (36 inches, a permit, May dates) appears on this page but sits inside an HTML comment and is immediately followed, in visible bold text, by the Commission's May 28, 2019 action eliminating that season for the Bay, the Potomac tributaries and the coast. It is left out entirely as abolished, not carried as a fourth striped bass region.
• Kingfish, pompano, crevalle jack, dolphin, swordfish, tuna and wahoo are on VMRC's page only as tournament-citation species (an angler awards program) — none of them carries a Regulation, Minimum Size Limit or Possession Limit field. Tuna, swordfish and wahoo are managed federally under NMFS HMS permits; kingfish, pompano and crevalle jack simply carry no state size or bag rule.
• Federal-waters exceptions are noted by VMRC for black sea bass, scup and summer flounder without giving the federal numbers themselves — those numbers are set by NMFS/the Mid-Atlantic Council and are not carried here.
• The Potomac River and its Virginia tributaries follow Potomac River Fisheries Commission rules instead of VMRC's for striped bass and summer flounder — a bi-state body this schema has no field for.
• Blue catfish (36-inch DWR rule) is left out — that agency and its whole freshwater/tidal-freshwater regulatory set is out of scope for a silo that compares coastal species.