If you can sort out the flip-flop weather patterns, you can catch snook in winter.
By Jeff Weakley,, Editor
Snook can’t read, but on this cool February morning, their magic number was 70. I was following the temp gauge on my fishfinder while we worked a stretch of docks on the west side of the Indian River.
Dock fishing turns on if the water temp sneaks above 70 degrees between cold fronts.
Sixty-eight, 68.5, 69—no bites. My friend Scott Scargle, a Florida expatriate living in North Carolina, had returned for a visit. He was in the bow pitching a gold-fleck plastic minnow on a light spinning outfit. A little bit of lead molded around the special worm hook carried the lure slowly to the grassbed.
Scott would then give a hop with the rod, carefully monitoring for bites. I was shifting places, nudging the trolling motor up front now and then, returning to the helm to look at the water temps. The incoming tide carried us gently south along the docks.
Snook Sauna
One of the best places to find snook in winter is along a concrete seawall protected from wind and open to sun. The wall captures the heat and warms the nearby water. One that produced well for me last year was a small residential marina along the Indian River, with deep, grassy water inside.
A section of the rectangular seawall had been eroded below the water line, and snook were holed up there. Even better, if you can find it, is a metal structure. A black, corrugated iron breakwall erected near a bridge project on my home waters (the Jensen Beach Causeway) held a lot of snook on the coldest days last winter. The fish were holding tight to the wall, lying inside the corrugated recesses.
The wall faced south, away from cool northerly winds, and directly in the face of the winter sun. There was a deep channel nearby, a few mangroves, some scattered, oyster-crusted rocks—in short, perfect snook habitat, with that metal solar heater close by.
Small, lipped minnow plugs, plastic shad-tail jigs and streamer flies are great in these scenarios. Basically, you want a lure two to four inches in length that sinks slowly and delivers lifelike action at a slow retrieve. In water below about 70 degrees, snook are reluctant to chase large, fast-moving prey. A mid-size topwater lure, like the classic Zara Spook, with a seductive surface wobble may pick up a few strikes. In truly cold water, say the mid- to low-60s, a bottom-hugging approach may be necessary. Try a bucktail jig in the 1⁄4- to 1⁄2-ounce range with a tip of shrimp, or perhaps a live shrimp on a jighead.
“Whoa, there’s one!” Scott grunted, sticking his rodtip high in the air. His line turned away from the dock and out to open water. There was a foamy wallow, and then a nice snook jumped. The season had been open only a week. Scott hadn’t fished salt water in months. In fact, the night before he’d called in to buy his first out-of-state fishing license, plus a snook stamp. This was our first fish of the day, and it taped a healthy 30 inches.
“You want to keep this one?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Been a while since I’ve boxed a snook,” I said, ruminating.
In a span of another 20 minutes, Scott added a 25-inch redfish and an 18-inch trout to the snook. A slam, in midwinter, in water no deeper than three feet. All three catches occurred in patches of water at or above 70 degrees. That night we grilled Scott’s slam, savoring the different flavors and textures. The redfish was the sweetest, and the best.
The winter of 2003-’04 was one of the first real winters we’ve had in peninsular Florida in a number of years. From mid-January through April, we had a steady series of cold fronts, at least one a week. I fished right on through the changes, noting water temps, barometric pressure, wind direction. Along the Indian River—which in many ways is like other estuarine waterways in Florida—I noticed a definite pattern. With the approach of a front, the wind shifted south to southwest, the barometer fell and the snook turned on. Slow-moving fronts were preceded by a day or two of very good fishing, particularly by midwinter standards. After each system passed, frigid north winds, clear skies and a screaming barometer brought a marked slow-down in action. When the barometer moderated and the winds subsided and shifted to the east, the fishing picked up again.
This is an ages-old cycle, but in the last decade, it seems as though the cold fronts lacked their historical punch. Maybe they’re back.
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