Snook Season.....

[76Red18]

I'm 100% in favor of a snook closure in my area after what I saw in Pine Island Sound and lower Charlotte Harbor. I will even go as far as no target. Tarpon on the other hand are highly migratory and the overall population shouldn't have been hurt much. Some of the "river residents" were killed though. Time will tell.

[fishhuntNC]

Wow how cold did the water get down there?

[76Red18]

Gulf was 47 for a couple days. Inshore was even lower. Mid 50's is the coldest I've ever seen the Gulf.

In the mid-forties off Jacksonville and in the St Johns River system for about two weeks during that cold spell. Slowly coming back up. I fished yesterday - temperature at Mayport - the mouth of the St Johns River - was 51 degrees. It was warmer offshore.

[Capt Chuck]

Excerpt from The Stuart News

Vero Beach’s Matt Fahmie and his friends used the rare opportunity to clean up the waterways a little bit of dead snook.

“We went out during the freezing temperatures just to look around and saw some snook struggling,” Fahmie said. “We went into some of the canals behind homes in John’s Island. The homeowners were pretty happy we were helping to clean up.”

Fahmie said his friends picked up over 70 large snook, 10 of which he estimated to be larger than 40 inches in length. The fish were taken to a tree farm in western Indian River County and used as fertilizer.

[Ed]

I was just down that way running a 60' Searay from Merrit Island to West Palm. The water in Merrit Island was freezing cold. At night in West Palm I tried fishing off the swim platform with the underwater lights on...but the huge snook swimming in the lights were not cooperating because of the cold temps. The only thing that would bite the shrimp was catfish...

Luckily the cold weather did not affect the redfish population. Caught this 27 incher and another just like her on 1-20 off the rocks in North Florida. Water temperature was about 51.