Snook Fishing
Learn A Few Tips On Snook Fishing
If you live in Southwest Florida or south of there, you are probably aware of how popular snook fishing is. Snook are very big with some of the largest being up to four feet and weighing over forty pounds. In fact, the record for a snook in Florida is forty-four pounds, eleven ounces. You can go snook fishing anywhere from the South Carolina coast to Brazil.
Another reason snook fishing is so popular is that they put up a terrific fight. However, if you should be winter fishing and the temperature is below seventy degrees, you probably won’t even be able to get one to move. They are very lethargic in cold temperatures. They like to hang out around estuaries, reefs, rock formation and mangroves. If the water temperature goes down to sixty degrees or below that, they can die.
Snook are greenish-silver with a black stripe that runs all the way from its gills to its tail. They can also have yellow fins. Once you locate a spot where snook are residing, you should fish for them with live shrimp as your bait. A 1/0 or 2/0 hook is excellent with 30 inches of forty pound shock leader on a 10 - 20 pound line. With snook, you can use small live fish for bait, such as mullet or pinfish. People also use many kinds of lures and jigs to draw out the fish.
Most snook are caught in the period of time an hour before high tide and during the first three hours of falling tide. Florida has some excellent locations for snook fishing and some people fish for snook every month of the year. No one can take snook in the summer but they can be fished for and released. Very early spring--March and April are popular times for snook fishing. The time period from the fall through December sees snook in places close to beaches where they can be fished in very clear water.
It is not unusual for you to be able to see the snook in the water sitting below and then watch it has it rises to take the bait and snap its head back and forth. Watching can be extremely exciting as is reeling in a big one, as you might imagine. It is common to catch a snook in the thirty to forty inch range. Snook are also so strong and so fast that it is easy to lose one, particularly if they are able to wrap themselves around an object or structure in the water and break the leader.
In the late fall it is not unusual to observe snook migrating into more shallow waters for the winter season. If you are able to locate a group, you can have a great day of fishing, trying to reel them in. It is possible for you to find them again for two or three days in a row at the same location.