by Capt. Matt Mitchell
An early cold front didn’t do much to drop our temperatures, but it did cut the humidity and gave boaters a rough go for a few days. This was just a little tease of what’s to come, though the cooler mornings were a nice change of pace. A noticeable cold front coming all the way down through Florida in September isn’t normal.
Snook season in our area runs from October 1st to November 30th. Our bag limit is one fish per person per day with a slot limit of 28-33 inches. If you plan to harvest a fish, you’ll need a $10 snook stamp. Although you can harvest these fish and they are delicious, getting one in that small 5-inch slot is tough. Most clients choose to release their fish, though I do harvest a few a season. There’s something special about eating a snook; what I took for granted as a kid makes for an amazing, memorable meal a few times a year.
Snook are an amazing gamefish, and we live in one of the best, if not the best, snook fisheries in the country. The number of different ways you can catch them is endless, basically anything from topwater plugs to cut bait and everything in between. My daily go-to is live pilchards, though my personal favorite is casting paddletails to mangrove shorelines. They are fast, strong, and aggressive, making them an outstanding adversary.
With so much whitebait, aka “pilchards,” around, it’s a hard bait to beat. During fall months, snook get totally dialed in on these pilchards as they pack on pounds in anticipation of winter. Being able to live-chum pilchards can be a game changer, as it quickly tells you if snook are feeding in the area. For fast-paced action, there’s no better way to snatch snook.
If you’re hunting that one big snook, pinfish, grunts, live ladyfish, or mullet are a better choice. Peak water movement is also a major factor in when the big girls feed. Night fishing from bridges and piers is also a great option, as snook like low-light conditions to ambush their food and structure. Beach fishing until our water temperatures drop also produces lots of snook. Soaking a chunk of cut ladyfish or mullet in the trough between the sandbars while throwing a paddle tail covers it all while beach fishing.
I hear a lot of guides/anglers say they don’t harvest snook, which is great for them, but in my opinion and the FWC’s, if our fishery could not sustain a snook season, it would never be open.