Assessing the status of fish stocks is fundamental to the scientific management of fishery resources. Setipinna taty, an economically and ecologically significant forage species, plays a crucial role within fish communities, and changes in its stock status can have critical ecological impacts. It is essential that the management of S. taty resources is based on robust scientific analysis of stock status. The data requirements of traditional stock assessment methods have hindered their use in assessing S. taty due to data scarcity. The rapid development of data-limited methods for estimating stock status has made it possible to achieve a credible assessment of S. taty resources despite the inadequacy of the data to support conventional analysis methods. In this study, the length-based spawning potential ratio model (LB-SPR), the length-based integrated mixed effects model (LIME), and Ensemble modeling based on a combination of these two models were used to evaluate the status of S. taty in Shandong inshore waters in 1999, 2000, 2006, 2017, and 2021. The spawning potential ratio (SPR) estimated by these models served as a biological reference point (BRP) for this study and as a proxy for maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in the absence of information on population size. Model results could potentially inform a sustainable fishing harvest strategy that targets a fishing mortality rate expected to result in 40% of unfished spawning output (known as "SPR_40%"), ensuring risk-averse management of populations with very low resilience. The SRP of SPR_30% is a threshold below which stocks are often considered overfished. Both LB-SPR and LIME model results showed that from 1999 to 2021, stock status reached its lowest level in 2000, then improved to its best state in 2017, before beginning to decline, and by 2021 had fallen to a similar level as that during 1999-2000. The SPR estimates from the LIME model were higher than those of LB-SPR for all years. Ensemble model SPR estimates were all lower than LIME results, but not all of them occurred between the LIME and LB-SPR results. The ensemble estimates of SPR from 1999 to 2021 showed an increasing trend (0.48–0.77) followed by a decrease to 0.47, all greater than the risk-averse value of 0.4. These values implied that the S. taty stock in Shandong inshore waters was in a healthy state throughout the study period. During the study period, favorable environmental conditions supported the growth and reproduction of S. taty in Shandong inshore, providing a certain guarantee for the health status of the S. taty resources. However, continually increasing exploitation intensity and spatial contraction and habitat deterioration of the core spawning and nursery grounds may adversely affect the stock status in the future. Currently, the S. taty stock in Shandong inshore has just reached full utilization, yet the fork length compositional structure remains above the population decline risk threshold (SPR_40%). Compression of this compositional structure nonetheless signals a need for precaution within the context of increasingly complex climatic change and increasing anthropogenic pressure. Considering the key position of S. taty in the Shandong fish community and its trophic characteristics should motivate fisheries researchers to evaluate the impacts of current commercial mesh net size of fishing gear and propose reasonable size constraints that can provide an optimal balance between ecological protection and economic benefit. The present study provides a credible scientific basis for the sustainable utilization of S. taty resources in Shandong inshore waters. It is the first public Chinese assessment report on the application of a multi-model combination to data-limited fishery stocks in China, and could help advance the progress of resource assessment for data-limited stocks throughout the country.