Development of rational management plans and correct management are essential to maintain the sustainability of fisheries resources. Fisheries management plans should be based on stock assessment and so stock assessment models are important tools for this. Over the last thirty years, fishery stock assessment models experienced a golden age and the number of models grew exponentially with improved computer technology and the integration of multidisciplinary research. At the same time, the complexity and diversity of the models makes choosing the correct one increasingly difficult for researchers and abuse of fisheries models may lead to stock collapse. In this paper, we reviewed fisheries stock assessment model structure, type, and estimators, i.e. fixed effect, random effect, and hierarchical Bayes to identify the typical models currently used in fisheries stock assessment and track their evolution and development. Meanwhile, the present paper discusses the problems with these models and presents prospects for their future development.