Southwest Florida loves its grouper -- often deep-fried and slapped on a bun with lettuce and tomato.

As diners have chowed down, federal fisheries regulators have struggled with plans to rebuild the population of red grouper, the most valuable grouper species in the Gulf of Mexico and a species that conservationists call a prime example of failed fisheries management.

Commercial fishermen pulled up 7 million pounds of the offshore reef fish in 2002 with a dockside value of $12.7 million, according to federal figures. Red grouper is the second most popular grouper species for recreational anglers.

Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is preparing to take public input on a plan that would cut the catch of red grouper. A decision on the plan could come next year.

"This is definitely a step in the right direction," said Jill Jensen, assistant fisheries director for the Gulf Restoration Network, a New Orleans-based coalition of conservation groups. "We're going to be making sure NOAA sticks to its guns on this."

A 1999 stock assessment led NOAA to declare red grouper overfished in 2000, a finding that is supposed to trigger a rebuilding plan within one year. Red grouper still is waiting.

Longline fishermen protested an original proposal to cut the allowable catch by 50 percent and to limit longline fishermen to water deeper than 50 fathoms, beyond the most productive red grouper spots.

The controversy caused the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council to miss its 2001 deadline to have a rebuilding plan in place.

By the time the Gulf council adopted the limits in 2000, a new stock assessment showed signs that the red grouper stock was recovering. NOAA rejected the plan.

In its place, it proposed a plan to reduce the commercial catch by 10 percent, from 9.4 million pounds to 8.8 million pounds each year and, for the first time, to set a specific commercial catch limit for red grouper at 5.3 million pounds each year.

If either limit is reached, regulators would shut down the entire shallow-water grouper fishery.

Conservationists praise the approach, saying it would prevent commercial fishermen from creating a new problem by shifting their effort to other at-risk grouper species.

For the same reason, the NOAA plan proposes reducing the annual quota of deepwater grouper species from 1.5 million pounds to 1 million pounds.

On the recreational side, anglers still would be limited to five groupers of any kind per trip, but the new plan would create a new wrinkle: only two of the five could be red groupers.

The state's largest recreational fishing lobbying group will "probably support" the new rules, said Ted Forsgren, the executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association in Florida.

Federal statistics estimate recreational anglers account for 20 percent of the red grouper catch. The rest is caught by commercial fishermen.

Fort Myers Beach commercial fisherman Eric Schmidt said he's concerned that recreational anglers are not shouldering their fair share of the burden of improving red grouper stocks.

Despite those misgivings, Schmidt said the proposed commercial catch limit is a better option than others that were under consideration.

"There is no Utopian solution to this," he said.

The proposed plan discards proposals by the Gulf council that would have limited the pounds of red grouper per fishing trip instead of setting an annual catch limit.

The problem with per-trip limits is that fishermen can just increase the number of trips to make up for the limits.

Longliners suggested that trip limits would be unfair -- maybe even illegal -- because they would penalize them more severely than other commercial fishermen because longliners catch more fish per trip.

The NOAA proposal also rejects the idea of ending the one-month stop on grouper fishing during spawning season from Feb. 15 to March 15.

Opponents of the closure argue that it doesn't reduce the total catch because fishermen just increase their fishing before and after the closure.

Southern Offshore Fishing Association Director Bob Spaeth said his group planned to "go along with pretty much everything" in the NOAA proposal.

"I think they did about the fairest thing they could do under the circumstances," said Spaeth, part-owner of four longline fishing boats based north of St. Petersburg. "I think people are trying to work toward a common goal."

Spaeth said the real solution to rebuilding grouper populations is to reduce the number of fishing boats allowed to fish for grouper.

He is pushing a plan in the early talking stages that would subject commercial grouper boats to new rules to be able to keep fishing.

Those that could keep fishing would qualify for a voluntary buyout by the federal government.

"It's a tough racket out here to make a living," Spaeth said. "I see more people falling out every day."

Forsgren, with the Coastal Conservation Association, said the proposed annual catch would unfairly favor unsustainable fishing practices by longliners, who would eat up most of the catch limit.

Besides that, the quota would create a so-called derby fishery -- where fishermen will rush to beat their competitors to the fish before the fishery is closed.

Derby fisheries are considered bad because they create unreliable markets for commercial fishermen and create unsafe conditions by forcing boats out in bad weather.

Spaeth said the proposed quota is set high enough that it won't create a derby fishery; fishermen won't hit the quota until November.

Fisheries biologist Pam Baker also fears creating a derby fishery and proposed individual fishing quotas as a solution.

With individual fishing quotas, each fisherman would be assigned a share of the total allowable catch and could catch it whenever he wanted throughout the year.

The quotas also could be sold to other fishermen -- an idea that raises worries in some quarters about creating a private commodity out of a public resource.

Baker said fishery regulators should start talking about individual fishing quotas for red grouper "as soon as possible."

While some look forward to the next form of regulation, others worry the current proposal might not work.

They fear the proposed catch limit is set too high, arguing that it is based on an unusually productive spawning season that masked the real level at which grouper catches are sustainable. The plan calls for a review of the quota in 2007 and again in 2010.

"They're going to be right back where they started," Forsgren said.