Anyone who knows me knows one of my favorite fish to catch is the snook. When it comes to being a thrilling catch, it checks all the boxes.
Snook even checks the “excellent fried with cheese grits and tartar sauce” box.
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For many a Florida angler, September 1 is a day circled on the calendar (even if that “circle” is actually a notification on a smart phone). It is the day when we can start inviting home a snook for dinner.
Except for this year. Now, whether or not you’ll need extra tartar sauce will depend upon where you plan to fish for that slot-sized snook.
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Where can I keep a snook and where can I not?
It’s not the first time a big chunk of “Snook Country” has been crossed off in red “no harvest here” lines. We’ve been down this road before, especially if an angler lives on Florida’s Southwest Coast. The trouble is, we’re going down this road all too often lately.
Before I get into why I think this is a huge problem, let me explain where you can and can’t take a home a snook in the Sunshine State, starting Wednesday at 12:01 a.m.
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Where you can keep a snook: Anywhere you can catch one along the entire Atlantic Coast of Florida, in the Florida Keys, the Everglades, Biscayne Bay, including Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River where a few snook live and every once in a while an angler catches one.
Where you cannot keep a snook, for now: From Gordon Pass in Collier County north to the Pinellas-Pasco county line. This zone is broken into two sections with differing closure periods, until further notice.
Keep an eye on this ruling coming in October: The area of Tampa Bay — all waters of Tampa Bay and Hillsborough County, all waters of Pinellas County, and waters north of State Road 64 which bisects Manatee County including all waters of the Braden River, and all tributaries of the Manatee River, excluding all waters of Palma Sola Bay — is closed to harvest of snook, redfish and trout until Oct. 22. On Oct. 6-7 in St. Augustine, the 7-member governor-appointed Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will review this regulation, put in place because of the terrible red tide fish kill this past summer, and decide whether to end it, or extend it.
Here, you still will not be able to keep a snook until Sept. 1, 2022 at the earliest: From Sarasota Bay through Gordon Pass in Collier County which means all state waters south of State Road 64 in Manatee County including Palma Sola Bay through Gordon Pass, but not including the Braden River or any tributaries of the Manatee River. Also, you cannot keep a redfish or spotted seatrout in this zone until May 31, 2022.
Can my lawyer help me understand Florida fishing regulations?
I know this is confusing. It isn’t meant to be, but the FWC is trying to conserve one of the most heavily fished for inshore species found in state waters. To review all the state snook regulations, possibly with legal counsel to help understand it, go to: MyFWC.com/fishing/saltwater/recreational/snook.
Here comes your unsolicited fish story from Ed
You know I’m not going to write about snook without sharing one of my stories about catching them. If you don’t know I spent seven years of my life living on Florida’s Gulf Coast in Tampa and Bradenton.
I’ve caught quite a few snook in waters between Tampa Bay and the Everglades’ Cape Sable. I always marveled at how a 34-inch snook caught on the Gulf coast had the same size head, but a slightly smaller, leaner body than its Atlantic coast counterpart.
My life in Bradenton was my purgatory. I managed a national chain shoe store just like Al Bundy did in “Married With Children.” And it was every bit of soul-stealing as the TV show portrayed.
But I had a great apartment. I was single. I worked 80-hour work weeks for peanuts just like the line in the song by The Clash, “Train in Vain” — “I got a job, but it don’t pay.”
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The best three things about the apartment were its location, location and location. It was a ground floor unit underneath a herd of rhinos and two elephants, but it had a sliding glass door steps from a cove off the Braden River. A quarter mile north of where the cove I lived on was, the Braden River met the Manatee River.
Why the Bomber Long A is the lure for snook
Needless to say to snook fans, the tannin-stained brackish waters near where two Florida waters meet is the exact place to find an inshore apex predator like snook hunting its prey.
A 7-foot light tackle spinning rod stood in the corner of my living room. A Bomber Long A — my dad’s favorite snook slaying plug — was tied onto it. Late at night, after stocking shelves and closing my retail store, I’d come home and walk out onto the dock there to make a few head-clearing casts.
Often, there were no takers. But when there were, it was every bit of what an overworked 26-year-old needed. Once in a while, when harvest season was open and when I caught a fish within the slot at the time, I had tomorrow night’s dinner.
If the fish was too big, or too small, as most were, that was fine, too. A quick release was just as rewarding.
Why the Piney Point fiasco is a microcosm of what’s wrong in Florida
It’s why the Piney Point fiasco earlier this year, and still lingering now, really upsets me. Within a few miles of where I lived in the early 1990s, a series of mistakes made in 2021 compromised the quality of water in the Little Manatee River, a tributary which flows into Tampa Bay and nearby to the one I lived on.
This is nothing new. Polluted phosphate mine waste spills and the fines paid by the offenders are simply passed off as “the price of doing business.” They happen all the time, only rarely do the Piney Points rise to regional or national news.
We have plenty of government sanctioned pollution of our waterways continuously in the manner of Lake Okeechobee discharges to estuaries. We endure frequent toxic algae blooms and killing of critical natural habitat because we can’t clean our waterways. And even when there isn’t anything toxic in the water, the sheer volume of stormwater runoff is enough of a problem to upset the natural balance of fish spawning behavior.
So if you can’t keep a snook this fall, at least you’ll know why. When will Florida fix all these problems and put the fishing first? Who knows? But if it doesn’t happen soon, we’ll all be snook-less in years to come.
Ed Killer is TCPalm’s outdoors writer. Sign up for his and other weekly newsletters at profile.tcpalm.com/newsletters/manage. Friend Ed on Facebook at Ed Killer, follow him on Twitter @tcpalmekiller or email him [email protected].
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Category: WHY
