Photo by Capt. John Kumiski.

Florida anglers love snook. What’s not to like? They possess all the characteristics needed by a great sport fish: They’re wary, they fight hard, they grow to impressive sizes and they’re delicious.

We love snook so much that between fishing pressure and habitat loss, the fishery has begun to decline. In an attempt to reverse the trend, Florida’s fisheries managers have implemented new regulations.

This article will explore the reasoning behind the new snook regulations, examine those regulations in detail, and then suggest two great places where you can reasonably expect to hook up with some fat linesiders.

Here we go!

THE PLAYERS
The agency that sets the regulations that we all have to live with is the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Division of Marine Fisheries Management. This agency holds scheduled meetings throughout the year to discuss a variety of marine fisheries issues. The final meeting that concerned the new snook regulations was held back in June of 2007.

Biologists from the FWCC want a 40 percent Spawning Potential Ratio for the snook population. So what is this SPR they are targeting?

A definition on the FWCC Web site describes it this way: “SPR is the ratio of the total weight of mature fish in a fished population to the total weight that would exist if the population was not fished.”

That number is important in measuring whether enough fish -- snook, in this case -- are surviving to maturity to keep the population healthy. The FWCC had already determined that the 40 percent SPR goal was not being reached on either of Florida’s coasts. So how could the agency increase the numbers of snook surviving to spawn?

GULF COAST
The FWCC decided that along the state’s Gulf shoreline, increasing the length of the closed season was needed. Consequently, they added the first two weeks of December and the entire month of February to the already closed season of Dec. 15 through Jan. 31. On the Gulf coast, the winter closure now runs from Dec. 1 through Feb. 28. The closed summer season remains the same, with the closure running from May through August.

The FWCC also changed the size limit on snook. On the Gulf coast, the old slot limit was from 27 to 34 inches. By law, fish smaller than 27 inches or larger than 34 inches total length had to be released. The new Gulf size limit is 28 to 33 inches.