Abstract: The Yangtze River estuary and its adjacent waters are important ground for spawning, feeding and growth and migratory path for many fish species in the coast of China, and effective monitoring on fishery resources in this area is the basis for stock assessment and resource conservation. Based on the four common approaches to fisheries monitoring framework, i.e. registration, questionnaires/interviews, direct observations and reporting, the development and deficiencies of various monitoring programmes in this waters were reviewed in this paper. In particular, for the fisheries-dependent and independent surveys, the level of fisheries observers, research vessels, sampling designs, acoustic survey, mark-recapture methods, eggs and juvenile surveys were reviewed in detail. Finally, some suggestions were raised for the improvement of current monitoring projects in order to provide the fundamental information for establishing a reasonable and reliable fisheries monitoring system in Yangtze River estuary in the future.