By Rodney Smith
We all have a favorite fish, but please don’t misunderstand me; in my eyes all fish are good. Most serious anglers have their local favorites; yours may be bass or sailfish; mine is snook.
Fishing in Florida for a young boy growing up was different when our state’s population was less than half of what it is today. The liberties we had were incomparable. We fished many of our neighborhood haunts day or night, mostly unsupervised and safe from harm.
Back then, I was often mesmerized watching stubborn, highly visible snook test the best and most respected anglers’ skills under the lights of piers, jetties and bridges.
Seeing big fish, lurking in the shadows and turning their sharp noses away from these die-hard anglers was as equally enduring as witnessing their fighting instincts and will to survive.
It wasn’t until I started fishing Sebastian Inlet after I migrated from Florida’s west coast to the Indian River Lagoon (IRL) in 1979 that my obsession for snook fishing started paying off. It wasn’t long before I caught the biggest snook I’ve ever kept (I release 99% of the fish I catch); it weighed nearly thirty pounds.
Over the many years, my clients and I fished for snook along the IRL coast we caught and released thousands of snook. There are many reasons for our bountiful catches, including time spent on the water, fisheries regulations, complete focus on a singular goal of catching snook, and most of all, location, location, location. Back then the IRL’s sea grass beds and its water quality were much healthier than today.
Somewhere along the line, about thirty years ago, I got involved in fisheries management and conservation. At the time, Florida’s newly formed Marine Fisheries Commission was discussing the possibilities of new snook regulations. Because of the hard freezes that hit Florida in the late 70’s, the number crunchers said snook populations were way down. At that time, tighter regulations seemed reasonable, since snook numbers were down, so I supported a decreased bag limit, increased size limit and a short closed season for snook.
Just a few years earlier regulations had allowed us four snook per day year-round, with a minimum size of 18 inches. Once snook regulations started they continued to get more stringent. Today it is very difficult to catch a keeper snook because of their small slot-size window (28-32″) and closed seasons.
Looking back, it’s easy to see we could have done a much better job protecting snook, and many of the other Florida gamefish, by protecting and restoring their habitat, maintaining or improving water quality, and protecting spawning fish and their historic spawning sites. We could have also done a much better job teaching anglers proper catch and release tactics and other techniques on reducing discard mortality and by limiting participation in this educational process to those anglers willing to commit to this program.
We could have also done a much better job teaching anglers proper catch and release tactics and other techniques on reducing discard mortality and by rewarding those anglers willing to commit to educational programs teaching better fisheries conservation.