2013: Reopen Snook Gulf Coast?

By Neil Taylor
Guide and owner, www.strikethreekayakfishing.com
Owner and administrator www.capmel.com

If you are an angler on the Gulf Coast of Florida, perhaps you have already heard the news- Snook will be reopened to harvest on September 1^st, ending a three and a half year moratorium for the species.  There may be some people who celebrate this decision.   Those would be in the minority and/or the uninformed.  This is a glaringly awful management decision for the species.   It is not about creating opposition or picking a fight, it is about the management and future of a species.  The freeze in January of 2010 crushed this species probably to an 80-year low.   Around west Central Florida, if the fish were not at a power plant, they were dead.    That is a fact.  Ship basins, marinas, offshore wrecks, all were 100% kills.   The very small percentage of fish that remained survived in the Tampa Bay area were at the warm water outflows at the power plants.   Period.

Following this event:  Numbers as bad as they were, I removed them as a charter target. Now, June of 2013, I still do not take snook trips. I was hoping to be able to add this species back into my charter business again this year but it became obvious that it just wasn’t the right thing to do.  Other guides have told me that they wish they had done the same thing.   They have seen the damage to the remaining fish done by Catch-and-Release fishing, mostly with problem dolphin attacking the released fish.   They have also seen a lot of fish mishandled, primarily kept out of the water way too long “for pictures.”  Others have said “we have a tough time really even finding that many to catch.”

What’s the big deal?   A challenger told me “Since there are as few as you say, then why would opening the species to harvest make any difference at all?”   Reopening this species to harvest could not come at a worse time.   The decision to wait one more year would spare the removal of a significant number of snook that will be in the “slot” (28 to 33 inches).   The bigger picture, what exactly are they basing this on, and where does their data/information come from?

My contacts in the guide world have all said the same thing “I have not had anyone contact me about this.”   Common sense would dictate that surveys would be done with reliable sources.   I can attest that I was not contacted either.  The consensus within this group of peers is that the species is nowhere near reaching the sustainable level in a lot of the Gulf ecosystem and that the harvest of the species will set back reaching that sustainable level significantly.    The biggest case-in-point, there are a significant percentage of fish that are 28 to 30-inches.  That would create an opportunity to remove a great portion of the first “class” of snook that hatched post-freeze.

The basis of their decision comes from speculation and poor speculation at that.  First off, their erroneous determination that baby snook were the hardest hit in the freeze.    Maybe they would have benefitted from studying the problem during the freeze as I did?   I surveyed every zone in my own area.   Seeing zero survivors was the first obvious fact.   That means, except at the power plants: It killed them all, big and small.   Regardless, the assessment of the stock should come from direct observation, not faulty data collected by unreliable sources.   Again, the reliable resources they had, they ignored and continue to ignore.   Decided behind a desk, the thousands of hours actually “on the water” ignored.

Instead they talk about things like Spawning Potential Ratios.    To have a big number like they are reporting, you would have to have a huge set of spawning females.   This does not match actual observations.   What does exist is a healthy population of males that is continuing to recharge every year.   Protecting the slot-size fish one more year protects a lot of the future female spawners and ultimately provides the return of a true trophy fishery again.  The extension of the closure would ensure significant momentum in the total recovery of a battling species.   It would mean I am back in business again.   I shifted to other species but that choice to leave them alone eliminated 30% of my business for the entire year but it is an ethical decision I stand by.  Time will tell if I will offer the trips in 2014.

They declare that there is “no statistical or biological reason to keep the species closed.”   How about by common sense then?   The head-scratcher is “statistical.”  Numbers are numbers.   Biological, OK.   Common sense, something that does not seem to want to enter the equation:
The goal should be to build the species back to prominence as a top sportsman fishery, something that we were spoiled with and took for granted before this weather event.   The census of snook on the Gulf coast is something that has to be done visually.   Areas to the south of the Tampa Bay area show all the signs of a faster regeneration of the species.   But, the people who knew the numbers before the freeze tell another story:   “Numbers of fish are still drastically below 2009 levels.  There is no question that things can get a lot better without another freeze, massive red tide or encouraging the removal of the fish by legal harvest.”   Absolutely.  That is some logical thinking.   It was from a guide who would like nothing more than to keep a snook again someday, but not in the current situation.

To the north: Numbers are the Tampa Bay area are troublesome.   The “census” so much easier to do in the months of June and July, the numbers that are collecting at the spawning zones is disappointing.   The euphoria I have heard by certain reports is not being backed up by observations.   Isolated areas that would normally have five to ten “groupings” of snook with 150 or more fish in each group have “a handful of fish.”   People seem to be excited to see a grouping of 20 fish.   Granted, a lot of those people started fishing in the past three years and qualify as Neuvo-Experts.  I’ll stick with other observations from people who call it “eerie.”

If the personal census means anything, here are my own snook “catch” numbers since the 2010 freeze.  These numbers are accurate and they tell a tale.   Keep in mind; this is on my charter outings and we were NOT targeting snook.  The numbers were as such:

2010:  9

2011:  16

2012:  27

This was with significantly “more days on the water than off” and with most of these trips in areas where snook would be an accidental catch in a normal (not recovery) year.   The numbers were kept very concisely and they show a trend but honestly, how can one be excited about 27 snook being caught throughout the course of an entire year?   And fifty two over a three year span?   There are a lot of ways to look at numbers but if you kind of average it all out: One accidental snook every ten times out on the water is a bad sign.  (Note:  In 2009, the totals from my “snook trips” averaged 11 snook per angler)

So, what happens next?  There is time.   September 1^st is the date that the species is set to reopen every year.   They have said it is their intention to open the species.   For me, I get along exceptionally well with the FWC Enforcement officers in the field but as for the desk-scientists, the have never responded well to me.    They do balk at their decisions when they face adversaries in numbers.    In 2011 they snuck in a change to red drum regulations hidden behind the furor over a ridiculous speckled trout proposal.  They backed down on the trout proposal.    (After holding about a dozen Redfish “workshops” around the state where even the people running the sessions said “The comments against the proposal are uniform around the state.”   They passed it anyway.)

Speak up and speak out:  If you have your own observations, let them be heard.    Feel free to also share them with me; I have some others who would like to review your feedback.   Do what you think is right but given the situation I would just educate all of your fishing pals and other friends to ignore the regulation and continue to release all snook.   It is not like there are no other options for table fish out there.   If everyone does their part, the species returns to prominence regardless of whatever ill-advised rules they make.

Other thoughts:

Try to be part of the recovery all the time:

If you find that you are losing a lot of fish to dolphin, or general post-release mortality, you could do as I and just leave them alone for a while.   Or if you see a presence of dolphin, move to another location.  Tragically, dolphin like to play a death game with any released fish, and they are more than happy to do this with a snook.

Choice in lures can also pay a price.  A client of mine called to tell me some bad news.  He was competing in a tournament and used a treble hook lure to target snook.   The snook he hooked inhaled the plug with both hooks.   He cut the line and let the fish go; assessing that would do less damage than removal of the lure.   He said that he did not feel good about that fish’ chance of surviving the encounter and he was giving up on targeting the species indefinitely.

Skip the photos- The same guy witnessed another boat keep a snook out of the water for more than five minutes.   They dropped it back in dead and when it just lay there, they threw it in their cooler and sped off.   It was my observation in 2010 that they should have said “No photographs” which would have eliminated the targeting of our remaining snook for tournaments and for sure would reduce the amount of time a fish is out of the water.    The most experienced anglers are not the problem.   The biggest problem is a majority of the anglers do not have that much experience and their handling of the fish is routinely the death of the fish.

Another article on the reopening of Snook:
http://www.tampaflfishing.com/2013/06/the-snook-fallacy.html

Articles on Fish Handling and Catch-and-Release:
http://www.capmel.com/index.php/articles/catch-and-release

Neil Taylor
www.strikethreekayakfishing.com
(Cell) 727-692-6345
LivelyBaits@aol.com

Please email your own comments on the Reopening of snook to the email address above.   I would like to share those thoughts with the public as well.