Snook Season Reopens After Midnight Tonight
By CAPT. MEL BERMAN, 970-WFLA

The statewide harvest season for snook reopens after midnight tonight, and anglers should note the latest snook regulations that are in effect. Last year, the FWC rchanged snook bag and size limits and harvest seasons to help protect and preserve snook stocks in Florida. There is now a one-fish daily bag limit per person statewide for snook and a slot limit of 28-32 inches total length in Atlantic waters and a 28-33 inches total length limit in Florida’s Gulfcoaast, Everglades National Park and Monroe County waters.

In addition, the snook harvest season will close on Dec. 1 along the Gulf, Everglades and Monroe County and will reopen March 1st. In the Atlantic, the season will close on December. 15 and reopen February. 1st.

These rules also allow anglers to carry more than one cast net aboard a vessel while fishing for snook.

These rule changes are to provide additional protection for Florida’s valuable snook populations, which are considered to be fairly healthy on the state’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The reduction in harvest is necessary to help achieve the Commission’s management goal for snook and sustain and improve the fishery for the future.

Licensed saltwater anglers must purchase a $2 permit to harvest snook. Snatch-hooking and spearing snook are prohibited, and it is illegal to buy or sell snook. These snook regulations also apply in federal waters.

The most encouraging news is that snook populations are in relatively good shape. And now, state anglers report more larger linesiders are showing up as a result of these new regulations. Many guides and conservation-minded fishers will only keep snook under 30-inches, putting the big breeders back to create future snook generations.

Snook remain creatures of ancient habit and will travel to their usual winter haunts during the cooling fall weather. If planning a trip, remember that you could soon find snook on the move as weather cools, ultimately winding up in the cozy confines of residential canals, backwater creeks and bayous by winter. Then, when water and weather chill down, look for them to be mostly in back bay areas like rivers, residential canals and inland lagoons.

Your best snook baits include any variety of light jigs, spoons, topwaters and certainly live shrimp and whitebait. Many recommend using circle hooks because they are almost always lip hooked. If you do get a hook deeply embedded in a snook, experts urge you to cut the leader. Tests have shown that they have an almost 100-percent survival rate when released this way.

Snook are unique in that they don’t swim around a lot. They sort of hover in the water waiting to see what’s for dinner. Then, when something that looks tasty swims by, they dart out to attack their prey. When snook strike a bait, you will feel a unique, sudden “bink” that requires only a slight hook-set to nab the fish. Feeling that famous snook “bink” is one of the aspects of snook fishing that most Florida snookers truly enjoy.

Happily, many anglers have bought into the catch and release philosophy and will only occasionally keep one for dinner and put the rest carefully back. 

When releasing snook, FWC snook expert Ron Taylor says just cradle the linesider in the water with your hand, keeping him upright until it regains its composure and swims off. Taylor says that you should not rock the snook back and forth in the water. Again, just gently his the fish until it swims way under it's own power.