After a round of public comment sessions at various stops in Florida in January, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) unveiled its proposals for tighter snook management at its April meeting.

Recommendations call for a tighter legal slot—from the current 27 to 34 inches (pinched tail measurement) to 28 to 32 inches for the Atlantic coast, and 28 to 33 inches in Gulf, Everglades National Park and Monroe County waters. In addition, the daily bag limit would drop from two to one per angler statewide. At present, only Florida Atlantic coast anglers are allowed two fish daily; the bag limit is already one per day from Everglades National Park west, including the Gulf Coast.

The FWC’s proposal also adds the first half of December and all of February to the closed harvest season in the Gulf, including Everglades National Park and Monroe County waters. In addition, the proposal would allow anglers to carry more than one cast net aboard a vessel.

A final public hearing on these proposals will be held on June 13-14 in Melbourne, Florida. Any proposals passed into law would go into effect in July 2007, in time for the fall open season.

The FWC believes that snook need further protection due to a general increase in angler effort, and have set a spawning potential ratio (SPR) goal of 40 percent. That is substantially higher than traditional for other popular gamefish, because snook are more susceptible to freezes, and are suffering severely from habitat loss. FWC found that many stakeholders responding to surveys feel that snook should be managed as a trophy fishery. At present FWC biologists report that the SPR for the Gulf snook fishery is at 26 percent and the Atlantic fishery is at 22 percent. Biologists believe that the proposed rule changes can get the snook SPR to 40 percent within a 10-year time frame.

Biologists maintain that coast-specific management is preferable due to the fact that Gulf and Atlantic snook differ genetically, For example, female snook on the Atlantic side grow larger, live longer, and mature earlier than those along the Gulf. Rates of natural mortality and spawning seasonality also differ. Data also indicate that snook do not travel from one coast to the other. Tagging data show that only 4 of over 13,000 tagged fish moved from one coast to the other.

As an aside, the subject of live and dead bait chumming for snook was addressed by an FWC snook workgroup in February, and the consensus of the group is that the technique cannot, nor should be, prohibited. Rather, anglers should be aware of situations where chumming could result in increased mortality through predation, such as when dolphin move into waters where and whenever snook respond to chum.

In all, there were 571 responses to FWC snook law surveys, including individuals who attended the January workshops, snook stamp holders who received mailed questionnaires, or took on-line surveys on the FWC web site.

There were a handful of options presented, including changes to bag, slot and seasons, changes only to bag, only to slot, and the status quo. Results show that 21 and 29 percent of survey respondents preferred the status quo on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, respectively. To read the entire FWC snook assessment, visit www.MyFWC.com/commission/2007/Apr07.

—Mike Conner