Snook are probably the most sought and least caught of Florida's game fish. Everybody wants to tangle with Centropomis undecimalis, but it ain't all that easy; snook are among the most "moody" of fish, What pleases them today sends them fleeing tomorrow, and some days, nothing at all seems to tempt their appetites.

This 39-inch snook fell for a swimbait on an overcast fall day near Bradenton. Photo by Frank Sargeant.

Fortunately, anglers who understand snook habits and habitat have a lot more opportunities to test their skills against the linesider than a few years back. Thanks to ever-tighter fishery regulations, Florida probably now has more snook than at any time in the past 25 years, and there are also more fish over 30 inches long than there have been in many decades.

On Tampa Bay, among other hotspots, because of a combination of improved management and a remarkable increase in water quality that began in 1984, state biologists say snook numbers are at a modern high, and continuing to increase. Cities around the bay began cleaning up their sewage outfalls in that year, and each summer, the water got clearer. Soon, sea grasses began to grow back across the flats where up to 80 percent of the bottom vegetation had disappeared due to pollution. Dozens of restoration projects around the bay in more recent years have created hundreds of acres of new estuarine habitat that's ideal for snook fingerlings to grow up in.

On Florida's West Coast, snook are now managed by a slot limit that's a scant 5 inches wide, only fish between 28 and 33 inches total length may be taken. That means there are tons of "too small" 4- and 5-pounders out there ready to test your tackle, and an uncommon number of true torpedoes. Fish over 40 inches long used to make major headlines in the fishing magazines, but these days they're not all that rare.

Most snooking experts catch two or three over that mark every summer. It seems not at all unlikely that the longstanding world record for the common snook of 54 pounds, 2 ounces could be broken at any moment, But it would take some doing, since the fish would have to be weighed immediately on a certified scales when and where it was caught and then released.

But, regardless, the big ones are getting bigger every year, and snook are known to live up to 19 years, according to Ron Taylor, Florida's longtime lead snook researcher at the Florida Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg. So, it's not at all unlikely that there are a number of these huge old females -- all large snook are females -- cruising the waters of both of Florida's coasts these days.

It was not that way 30 years ago. Once people learned that a skinned snook was anything but the fabled "soapfish," the demand for snook on the table went ballistic and every legal snook went in the icebox. With the first size limit (circa 1970) at just 18 inches, most snook never reached spawning age before they were cozying up to some grits and hushpuppies.

One other factor that appears to be in the snook's favor is a series of warm winters stretching back some 14 years. In some years before that, snook at the northern end of their range (roughly up to New Port Richey on the West Coast and to Daytona Beach on the East Coast) often died by the thousands on winter cold fronts. The species can tolerate temperatures no lower than the mid-50s. On Tampa Bay alone, one terrible freeze in 1989 caused a kill that biologist Ron Taylor estimated to be in excess of 10,000 fish. Dead snook hung from the mangroves like big silver Christmas ornaments for weeks afterward.