Fishing with Capt. George Tunison | Yes, there are huge snook in local waters

Fortunately, with a mild winter season there’s been lots of little or “practice snook” biting in the back country, upriver and on both sides of Charlotte Harbor to keep folks interested. With warming weather that will soon change as the big girls are coming out from their wintering-over spots and hopefully becoming more accessible.

Then, you go home and pick up your copy of Florida Sportsman or turn on YouTube and there they are, the giants, the magazine cover monsters that you never get to tangle with after fishing Southwest Florida for years, for decades. You start to wonder … are there really big snook swimming in Southwest Florida waters? You ask yourself, “After decades of local snook catches, how come I never bag a big one?”

Well, there certainly are huge snook swimming in local waters. If you were here for the 2010 deep freeze and visited local creeks you would have seen acres of dead and dying adult trophy-sized fish littering the surface. Those horrible scenes verified the fact that indeed we had tons of big snook around that were maybe too smart for the average local angler to catch. Are we back to those same numbers 15 years later? Depends on who you ask, of course, but with closures, our population numbers are pretty strong although catching a really big snook has admittedly become tougher in recent years.

The main reason the average local angler isn’t catching really big, long-as-your-leg, 40-pound monsters is that they aren’t properly fishing or set up for them. You have to adapt.

I have a hard-headed friend that fishes a gold spoon on 20-pound Power Pro with no leader material and during both winter and summer, uses the same fast retrieve. During the cold water period he catches no fish. If you ask him in January how the fishing is, he’ll tell you It stinks. No fish around!” In summer he catches a few and will say, “Fishing’s picking up!” Of course, this is the guy that will drive us all crazy by eventually catching a whale, but the chances are pretty slim.

Trophy snook hunters aren’t throwing lures like spoons or soft paddle tails that produce numbers of smaller fish but putt bigger live or dead baits on big hooks on bigger equipment and spending time, often lots of time, in the right places and often at night. Now, can you catch a huge snook on regular lures? Sure! My biggest night-caught snook of just a hair over 34 pounds was caught on a sinking MirrOlure in the mouth of the river. My biggest day shift snook of just under 30 pounds was caught on a cloudless, bright sunny day over a shallow south Matlacha oyster bar while teaching a client how to do the “walk-the-dawg” retrieve with a floating MirrOlure. But, both of these were very unusual, lifetime lucky catches and not how I would normally be set up to try and consistently catch a true trophy-sized specimen.

To try and bag a monster without spending years or depending on pure luck, first think about changing locations. The Atlantic side of Florida, places like Indian River Lagoon and the ocean inlets like Sebastian and Jupiter, offer a much better shot at catching a 4-footer or 40-pound giant. The state record of 45.12 pounds was caught out of Sebastian. Maybe Costa Rica is calling you to come down and break Mr. Ponzi’s all tackle common snook record of 53.10 pounds from 1978.

If staying close to home is your only choice, one good option would be to pick a local bridge and camp out. Spool up with 80 to 100-pound braid and same sized leader. Think a dead 10-inch mullet or ladyfish on bottom or a live one floated close to pilings and walls. Most importantly bring the true trophy hunters secret weapon – patience.

Capt. George Tunison is a Cape Coral resident fishing guide. You can contact him at 239-579-0461 or via email at captgeorget3@aol.com.