“And now for something completely different”. The offshore bite has been hit or miss as it is in the summer months, but the summer brings an opportunity to catch one of my favorite inshore fish in great numbers. The snook (some say snook like book and smone say snook like nuke, take your pick). Here’s what our friends at wiki say.
The common snook (Centropomus undecimalis) is a species of marine fish in the family Centropomidae of the order Perciformes. This species is native to the coastal waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, from southern Florida and Texas[1] to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
One of the largest snooks, C. undecimalis grows to a maximum overall length of 140 cm (4 ft 7 in) and a maximum recorded weight of 24 kg (54 lb). Of typical centropomid form, it possesses unremarkable coloration except for a distinctive black lateral line. It may also possess bright yellow pelvic and caudal fins especially during spawn.
Occurring in shallow coastal waters (up to 20 m [66 ft] depth), estuaries, and lagoons, the fish often enters fresh water. It is carnivorous, with a diet dominated by smaller fishes, and crustaceans such as shrimps, and occasionally crabs.
Considered an excellent food fish, the common snook is fished commercially and raised in aquaculture although it is not available for sale in the US. It is also prized as a game fish, being known for their great fighting capabilities.
Three United States Navy submarines have been named for this species, USS Robalo (SS-273) and USS Snook (SS-279) in the Second World War and USS Snook (SSN-592) in the 1950s.
The common snook is also known as the sergeant fish or róbalo. It was originally assigned to the sciaenid genus Sciaena; Sciaena undecimradiatus and Centropomus undecimradiatus are obsolete synonyms for the species.
I say that the Snook is a hard hitting, drag pulling, often acrobatic fighter. Which means lots of fun on light tackle. Here’s a picture of Verniece holding the first snook of the day.
I joined Newy and his wife Vern on their inshore boat, the “little P.O.’d. We trailered the boat from Port Canaveral to Port Salerno (Near Stuart FL). It’s a two hour ride and well worth it. Newy and Vern spent the prior evening catching pinfish (Newy’s secret bait). They put these in a large portable bait tank and hooked up an oxygen tank to it to keep the pinfish alive for the next day. Our plan was to arrive at the change of the tide and anchor up near the south jetty and wait for the outgoing tide to do its magic. The snook use the rushing, debris filled outgoing river water as cover to ambush little fish being flushed out of the river. Most of the fishermen that fish snook catch a local bait fish we call white bait. I think that they are actually scaled sardine. We trucked down our own bait, the pinfish, because the snook can’t resist them. We out fished our fellow fishermen 10 to 1 using Newy’s “secret bait. I originally thought the pinfish they caught were a bit too big for the snook. I mean, some of the pinfish were big enough to fillet. A few were approaching one pound. “Too big for the snook” was soon proven wrong.
We finally had the current going fast enough, but no bites. A few of our neighboring boats pulled up anchor and left. We were getting discouraged. Maybe they were not here in big numbers yet. We usually come in August, so maybe we were too early in the year. Newy said “let’s give it ten more minutes and we will call it a day”. Well a few short minutes later, Vern’s bait gets hammered and the fight is on. Vern won this battle (see the picture above. From that point on every bait we put in the water was attacked within seconds. We had to be careful to not all be fishing at the same time since one of us had to help land and release the latest snook.
Here’s Newy with one of his nice snook.
We did not take pictures of every snook, because, as you can see, they all looked alike. They were all 37 inches in length and about 17 inches in girth. That puts them at about 13lbs. We do not keep any snook, because the season is closed until September. Even if the season were open, these puppies would be over the size limit.
I will add a picture of me and one of my snook just to remind myself of how much fun we had.
For those of you keeping score, we landed 10 snook and lost many more all in 90 minutes. We ran out of bait and a storm was on its way to meet us, so we ran back to the dock feeling very successful. We all wore a smile during the truck ride back home. Thanks Newy and Verniece for a great day of fishing!
