A snook has sharp gill plates and a black lateral line. If you’ve spent time with them, you probably know they’re found around mangrove trees and gets ornery during cool temperatures. But how many anglers grasp the connection between snook length and weight? It’s the key piece of the puzzle that informs all your other decisions while fishing. That’s because knowing it means knowing what size hook or bait to use, where to throw it and what limit you need to keep (or not).
See, the graphic above is more than just a “bragging board.” It illustrates everything from tiny juvenile snook tucked beneath boat docks to huge trophies cruising off-shore passes. Snook spend most of their early years hiding out among mangrove roots, living in relatively shallow areas where they don’t need much power, just stealth. At around fourteen inches, the fish weigh just over a pound. Catch one in the shallow areas where they live and you’ll notice how easy they get off the hook and throw themselves all over the place. This isn’t due to bad hooks, but because a fourteen-inch snook has no trouble throwing a light spinning rod with ten-pound line.
How Snook Size Affects Your Fishing Gear
You’ll find them hanging out along seawalls and stacked up underneath bridge pilings waiting for a pinfish to float past. About the time a snook reaches twenty inches, it will be several pounds heavier and will begin to make its way further out into deeper channels. Our choice of tackle now becomes important. For a smaller snook, say less than two feet long, a ten-pound spinning outfit is adequate but don’t try to muscle a thirty-inch snook on that rig. More often than not, you’ll lose the fish or end up breaking your leader. As you can see from the chart, heavier line and bigger hook size recommendations increases continually with larger fish. That matches the greater power these creatures develop.
Then you bump into the keeper slot for snook. Down here in Florida we can take one snook per angler between twenty-eight and thirty-three inches long. That’s important because twenty-eight inches is about a thirteen-pound, six-year-old snook. It is big enough to test your tackle, yet small enough that you might consider eating it if you want to (and it fits into your cooler). You’ll see those spots highlighted in green on the infographic. Those are the good zones for anglers hoping to get something they can take home.
Any bigger than thirty-three inches though and the rule book gets thrown out the window. Snooks over thirty-three inches is immediate release only. And no, it’s not some pesky bureaucracy. It’s biology. Snook change sex from male to female as they age (born male, then change sex later into females). As a rule of thumb, big females over thirty-three inches are the egg producers in this population. They produce the overwhelming majority of eggs released each year. At peak spawning, which occurs along coastal passes in late summer, one big female will release millions of eggs.
That’s a forty-pound or so snook on your scale. That’s more than ten years old and a reproductive powerhouse. It’s those fish that ensure the future of this species. Those are the ones we must catch and release with care. The transition from keeper to protector is fast, so measure first, celebrate second.
When you are fishing for much larger fish, choosing the right tackle becomes critical. For the vast majority of inshore fishing, a thirty-pound braided mainline paired with a twenty-pound fluorocarbon leader is a safe bet. When you’re trying to push past shallow stuff and really target those deep passes where forty-plus pounders hide, you need beefier hooks and line. Upgrading to four or five-ounce circle hooks seems like an easy recommendation on the chart for the giants. The circle hooks tend not to get the fish gut hooked, which will greatly increase chance of survival once released. You won’t be keeping the big ones, so now it’s more about keeping them alive than anything else. So do what you can to keep them alive long enough to return them to the water. Revive them correctly by wetting your hands and minimally exposing them to air before releasing them.
Gear is important too but so is location. Structure in shallow water holds small snook. Large snook prefer deep channels, open passes and offshore structure in the ocean. The chart relates size to its typical habitat. The fish starts near the docks and moves to deep offshore structure over it’s life span. Knowing the migration of the fish will help find where you should be focusing your efforts.
Looking for a fish to stuff in a cooler? Target the inlet/bridge areas for the twenty-eight to thirty-three inch range. Looking for a picture to post online? Chase the deeper passes when the tide is running strong. Either way treat each fish like it’s going to be your final opportunity to land one. Respect the limits and know big isn’t always about weight. It should of been more than just size.