As I sit here at the keyboard on the morning of March 16th, I’m just coming down off the three-day Saltwater Fishing Expo in Edison, preceded of course by five days at the Atlantic City Boat Show. Over a thousand subscribers signed up for The Fisherman at these shows alone, hundreds more stopped by the booth just to chat. And now that I’ve talked myself hoarse during another wonderfully successful show season, let me be the first to welcome you to the first of 26 digital weekly editions for the 2026 fishing season!
Subscribers, in addition to my weekly editorial vent, you’ll also get full access to TheFisherman.com, including weekly news updates and events, new product reviews, as well as weekly features covering inshore, offshore, freshwater, surf and fly fishing topics over the next eight months. If you’re interested in tackling a column, or have an opinion to share on the state of our recreational fisheries, email me at jhutchinson@thefisherman.com – this is our 54th year covering recreational fishing in the New Jersey, Delaware Bay region, and I like to think of it as a partnership. So, if you’d like to “partner” on some editorial content, just email me.
Speaking of partnerships, back in February at the Miami Boat Show, NOAA Administrator Dr. Neil Jacobs announced a new state-led partnership aimed at improving fisheries data collection at the federal level. This new collaboration, known as the Recreational Angler Partnership Improvement Directive (RAPID), will invite states to co-design a replacement for the “imprecise” Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP).
MRIP of course replaced the equally “imprecise” MRFSS (Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey), and now another government acronym has been introduced by way of RAPID. This new addition to the alphabet soup of recreational fisheries was unveiled during a Recreational Fishing Stakeholders Roundtable in Miami, where Dr. Jacobs “formally announced a priority initiative to transform recreational fishing data in the United States.”
In moving away from MRIP – and MRFSS before that – NOAA Fisheries describes RAPID as “a partnership-driven framework co-created with you,” which I guess means us in the angling community. Regrettably, this face-to-face partnership between you, me and the folks at NOAA seems to have started and ended at a roundtable meeting in Miami with the suit and tie set. To be more specific, there were literally tens of thousands of diverse anglers walking the floor of the Atlantic City Convention Center and New Jersey Convention Center in Edison this year; missing from that gathering of stakeholders was a NOAA Fisheries booth.
After receiving glowing words of praise about the RAPID announcement and Recreational Fishing Stakeholders Roundtable discussions in Miami, I emailed Russell Dunn, NOAA’s senior advisor for recreational fisheries to ask, essentially, “what about us?”
“Unfortunately, we won’t have sufficient additional details to announce next week in Atlantic City,” Dunn told me the week after the Miami show. As for the Saltwater Fishing Expo in Edison, Dunn deferred to another NOAA staffer who had literally nothing to add. Dunn did say “as we move forward we’d appreciate being able to share progress and plans with your readership to ensure they are aware and able to engage.”
“As we develop that schedule and other aspects of RAPID, we’ll keep you in the loop,” he added. So now, in an effort to keep you in the loop as well, on Tuesday, March 31 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., NOAA Fisheries will host a “virtual” Mid-Atlantic Recreational Fisheries Roundtable Webinar. If you’re free for a few hours, I would encourage you to register for this online discussion. Otherwise, I do plan on sitting through this meeting to provide updates in the coming days and weeks.
I have 31 more Editor’s Logs to write this season, might as well kick of the weekly editorial season with yet another meeting; I won’t be wearing a suit or a tie.
