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Tampa Bay - South Shore
Capt. Fred Everson
August 27, 2007
Tampa Bay - Saltwater Fishing Report
August has been a typically tough month for Southshore anglers. Besides the heat, we’ve had regular thunderstorms, and even a couple of days of rain soaked overcast.
I did get out one afternoon last week to do some wading and was surprised at how warm the water was. I thought all the rain we’ve had lately would have cooled things off, but apparently not. I caught only a single redfish and it felt like it was partially cooked already.
Capt. Danny Guarino said he’s been catching a few redfish and snook on his recent trips in Little Cockroach Bay, but that the fishing has been pretty slow. This is nothing out of the ordinary – they don’t call them the dog days of summer for nothing.
Snook season reopens on September 01, but there is not much to get excited about that I can see. I’m not finding many snook in most of the regular spots, and that’s cause for concern.
Snook anglers on the West Coast will have a new slot limit – 28 to 33 inches, with one fish allowed per angler. The East Coast slot is 28 to 32 inches, also one fish per angler. The idea behind the change is to relieve some of the relentless pressure that recreational anglers and fishing guides put on snook. The season will also close on December 01 – two weeks earlier than last year, and open on March 01 2008 -- a month later.
For a fish that is supposed to be hard to catch, snook will fall all over themselves when you chum them up with live sardines. Practically every snook I caught last year had a couple of hook holes in his jaw. We condition the fish to eat the sardines, and release them over and over until they reach the bottom of the slot limit. Then we throw them in the cooler, and eventually a frying pan.
A 28 inch snook is probably five years old. He’s been caught an average of four times before somebody finally kills it, cooks it and eats it. And that’s why we have a lot fewer snook than we did 10 years ago. The new limit is a step in the right direction, but my guess is that ultimately the solution will be strictly no kill. Some of the guides I talk to are already in favor of shutting snook down entirely – making them like tarpon. The big difference is that you can’t eat tarpon, while snook are highly prized as table fare. It’s a fatal flaw for any fish.
For die hard snook anglers, the real value of this fish is bending a rod and taking drag. That’s why some guys target big snook at night during the closed season. Even if you could keep one legally, the fish over 40 inches is well past its edible prime, but it’s at the peak of its power as a gamefish. That’s the real reason snook is Florida’s most popular gamefish.
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