From top to bottom: common snook, tarpon snook, fat snook and swordspine snook.

Here’s where it gets tricky. The anal fin is really the key to identifying all snooks, but on the fat snook I have seen variations on the size of the anal fin spike. I was first told that the fat snook is born with a long spike and it gets shorter with age. Problem is, I’ve never seen a fish with an intermediate size spike. I have seen hundreds of fat snook and they either have a long spike or a short spike. I’m on a mission to get to the bottom of this mystery. Besides the spike, the fat snook does have six soft rays on the anal fin.

World record for the species is around 10 pounds. Unlike the diminutive tarpon and swordspine snook, it is possible to catch a fat snook exceeding Florida’s minimum legal size for retention of snook, 26 inches. Not much is known about their range, but I do know there are healthy fat snook populations in the Stuart area (Atlantic coast) as well as Fort Myers (Gulf side). What these two areas have in common is they are located at either end of the Okeechobee Waterway; this suggests that fat snook like to be near a source of fresh water. Backing that up is the fact that fat snook are very plentiful at flood-control spillways when large amounts of fresh water is pouring over them.

Swordspine Snook (C. ensiferus)

These little guys seldom exceed one pound and are so rare that a catch is something to really be proud of. Body shape is much like that of a young fat snook: stockier than a common snook. The scales are the biggest of all the snooks: just 54 scales going down the lateral line. Swordspines have 18 or 19 gill rakers.

The name comes from the large size of the spike on the anal fin. This is the only snook on which the anal spike is so long that it can actually touch the tail fin. One theory is this petite fish evolved a long spike as a defense against predation. Most swordspine anal spikes are bent but I did catch one that was perfectly straight. Like the common and fat snook, there are 6 soft rays on the anal fin and they are always shorter than the spike.

You won’t find these guys out in the open. They like the safety of mangroves or docks, and frequently range well up into freshwater systems.

Florida law lumps all snooks into one set of regulations, limiting retention to fish between 26 and 34 inches, with respective bag and season limits for Atlantic and Gulf coasts. That means it’s unlikely you’ll be taking one of the three lesser species to the frying pan. Their apparent scarcity may also soon make them eligible for special protection.

FS