Recreational fishing is an important component of the global capture fishery, given its significant role in the economy, social culture, and ecology. Compared to the mature development found in industrialized countries, recreational fishing in developing countries or transitional economy is a new industry with abundant jobs and high revenues. China’s recreational fishery industry has shown an upward trend since 2003. This paper built an evaluation framework from both static (present competitive strength) and dynamic (potential competitive strength) perspectives to evaluate recreational fishery competitiveness in 30 Chinese provinces based on normal cloud model. The results showed the following: (1) The evaluation framework can effectively evaluate recreational fishery competitiveness. Meanwhile, there is significant randomness and fuzziness discrepancy between different indicators. ‘Industry’ indicators had the lowest fuzziness and randomness. (2) The development of recreational fishery competitiveness in China is not strong and uneven, with more than two-thirds of the total provinces with the lowest competitiveness level. Regarding spatial distribution, the eastern coastal provinces had relatively strong competitiveness, whereas the western inland provinces were weak. (3) There was stability divergence of competitiveness results among different grades. In general, the competitiveness of provinces belonging to grades I and V was the most stable, while other provinces are relatively unstable with the characteristics of dynamic changes. (4) The main advantageous factors for recreational fishery competitiveness in most provinces were ‘service’, whereas the main disadvantageous factor was ‘resources’. The abundance of fishery resources might not be a key factor resulting in regional recreational fishery competitiveness discrepancies. This study can provide a reference for decision-makers to formulate an assessment framework for recreational fishery industry and provide ideas for the formulation of recreational fishery planning at the national level.