Virginia · Cobia
Can you keep a cobia in Virginia?
Yes, with limits
Statewide
Open todaySize
43 inches and up
total length
Daily bag
1
per person per day, or 2 per vessel, whichever is more restrictive
Closes each year Closed September 21 through June 14 — the season runs June 15 to September 20
43 inches, June 15 through September 20 — the same figure and season as Maryland. The bag is whichever cap binds first: 1 per angler, or 2 per vessel. Gaffing is prohibited.
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.
Other species in Virginia
- Striped bass (rockfish)
- Summer flounder
- Black sea bass
- Bluefish
- Red drum (channel bass, redfish)
- Speckled trout (spotted seatrout)
- Grey trout (weakfish)
- Tautog (blackfish)
- Scup (porgy)
- Spanish mackerel
- King mackerel
- Black drum
- Sheepshead
- Atlantic spadefish
- Croaker
- Spot
- Greater amberjack
- American eel
- Grouper (all species, combined)
- Blueline tilefish
- Golden tilefish
- Sharks (most species — see notes for exceptions)
- River herring (alewife and blueback herring)
- American shad
- Sturgeon