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Permit The Snook
Snook populate Miami’s Biscayne Bay year ‘round and Capt. Mo knows where and how to find these hard fighters. Whether a seasoned angler or a novice to shallow water fishing, Capt. Mo welcomes all skill levels and enjoys watching his anglers apply his knowledge to fighting and landing snook in Biscayne Bay. Give him a call today and find out what fishing in Biscayne Bay is all about.
Equally at home in both fresh and salt water, the common snook is one of Florida’s premier game fish.
The largest of the five species, the common snook (Centropomus undecimalis) is also the most abundant, wide-ranging, and sought-after. The snook is to inshore saltwater anglers what a largemouth bass is to avid freshwater anglers. Once hooked, the snook’s speed and strength strain the vocabulary as well as the fishing line.
“Tacklebuster,” “linestretcher,” and “acrobat”
are just a few of the terms used by snook anglers to describe these silver bullets. Indeed, although snook is one of the tastiest of all fish, with white, flaky meat that is high in protein and low in calories, it is valued more today for its fighting spirit than its flavor.
Snook is a streamlined, extremely powerful fish. It is silvery green, with a distinctive black lateral line that runs from the edge of the gill cover to the tip of its tail. This stripe accounts for its common names of “linesider” and “sergeant fish.” The fins are sometimes a bright canary yellow. Snook have a long, concave snout and a lower jaw that extends beyond the upper jaw. The large mouth is filled with brush-like teeth. Although snook feed primarily on other fish, their carnivorous diet also includes shrimp, crabs, and a variety of other organisms. Snook lie in wait while currents funnel the food to their vicinity, and then they ambush their prey with lightning quickness. Snook may live more than 20 years and reach a length of 50 inches and a weight of more than 40 pounds. However, in the last five years, most snook caught by anglers on the east coast average 9.4 pounds, and gulf coast catches average 7.2 pounds. The largest snook recorded from Florida weighed 44 pounds, 3 ounces, and was landed in Fort Myers in 1984 using conventional tackle. The largest snook caught in Florida using fly fishing tackle was taken in Chokoloskee in 1993 and weighed 30 pounds, 4 ounces. The world record, as certified by the International Game Fish Association, is a common snook landed in Costa Rica in 1978 that weighed 53 pounds, 10 ounces.
Snook are protandric hermaphrodites, meaning that they may reverse sex from male to female, an uncommon adaptation in fish. Much about this process in snook is unknown, but scientists do know that the largest and oldest fish are most likely to be females and that this sex reversal is brought about by a change in the size of individuals within a group of snook. In other words, a group that loses its largest fish has lost females, so some males might undergo sex reversal—a process that occurs in as few as 60 to 90 days. Snook are cold-sensitive fish generally restricted to tropical and subtropical waters. They prefer moving tides and are dependent upon structures like rock outcroppings or mangroves for shelter, which accounts for their tendency to “hug the shores” of inlets and estuaries.
Life History
Snook are not generally long-distance travelers; they mostly move between their wintering grounds in rivers or protected basins and their spawning grounds near inlets or the mouths of estuaries. Most snook tagged off Naples were recaptured within 10 miles of their release site. However, east coast snook appear to venture farther from home, and snook tagged in Jupiter and Lake Worth inlets have been recaptured as far north as Cape Canaveral and as far south as Florida Bay. Recent studies suggest that some snook in Florida waters even travel coast to coast via the Lake Okeechobee navigational system.
Like salmon, snook return to the same spawning sites each summer.
Spawning activity may begin as early as April and extend into October. It is more intense during new- or full-moon phases and may occur daily. Major spawning activity is centered around months with long daylight hours, generally June and July, and tapers off in August and September. Mature females may produce more than 1.5 million eggs with each spawn and may spawn every other day in the early part of the season.Scientific name: Centropomus undecimalis is the scientific name of the common snook.
Size: To about 4 feet, 50 pounds
Range: South Carolina to southern Brazil; in the U.S., common only in Florida and Texas
Habitat: Throughout estuary and nearshore waters, common along mangrove shorelines, in brackish streams, and in freshwater rivers and canalsCourtesy of Florida Wildlife Commission
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It could be you posing with one of those beauties!
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