Whole small baitfish (whitebait, hardyheads, small tommy ruff or garfish where legal), pilchard pieces, squid strips, and live baitfish under a float at night
Lures
2.5–4 inch soft plastics (minnow and jerkshad profiles) on 1/8–1/4 oz jig heads, small shallow-diving hardbody minnows, small metal slugs, and surface walkers in low light
Rigs
Light spin outfit with 6–10 lb braid and a 15–20 lb mono or fluorocarbon leader; snook teeth go straight through light mono. For bait, a float rig with a whole small baitfish on a size 1–2/0 hook set at the depth of the weed tops, or a lightly weighted running sinker rig drifted past the pylons. Where wire is legal, a short light wire trace stops bite-offs, but a heavy mono leader usually does the job.
Technique
Snook like speed and movement. Cast plastics and minnows across seagrass edges and beside pylons and work them with a fast, erratic retrieve and the odd pause; many hits come on the pause. After dark, fish the edge of the light where it fades into the shadow, since snook sit just outside the lit water waiting for baitfish. On bait, a float-drifted whole baitfish through the same light line is hard to beat. Strike positively, as their bony mouths shed hooks easily.
Best Time
Dawn, dusk and after dark under jetty lights are the prime times. Snook are caught all year, with the warmer months bringing more fish onto the shallow seagrass and jetties. A moving tide that pushes bait along the weed edge helps.
Identification
Also known asSea pike, short-finned sea pike, pike
Very long, slender and almost round in cross-section, silvery green to bronze over the back and bright silver below, with a pointed head, a jutting lower jaw full of needle teeth, and two small, widely separated dorsal fins. Faint dusky bars sometimes show over the back. Longfin pike are the usual mix-up: they have a much bigger eye, a longer-based second dorsal fin and far smaller teeth. Snook, sea pike and short-finned pike are all the same fish; the tropical barracudas are not.
Size & Growth
Most snook caught from jetties are 40–65 cm and under a kilo, because for their length they weigh very little. A 75 cm fish is a good one, and they reach more than a metre and about 6 kg and can live 20 years. Schools tend to be one size grade, so if the first few are small, the rest usually will be too, and a long, thin fish is shorter than it looks next to a measure.
Diet & Habitat
Ambush predators of small fish (hardyheads, whitebait, tommy ruff, garfish, juvenile mullet) and squid, taken with a short, fast rush from cover. They hold over seagrass beds and kelp reef, along reef edges with sand and seagrass patches, and around jetty pylons, breakwalls and rock walls, mostly in less than about 20 m and often within a cast of the shore. At night, lit jetties concentrate baitfish and the snook follow.
Eating Quality
Good eating when looked after, despite the by-catch reputation. Bleed and ice them the moment they land: the flesh is soft and low in oil and turns mushy quickly in a warm bucket. Fillet and skin them while cold. The white, mild, fine-grained meat suits crumbing and shallow-frying, and bigger fish cut into cutlets bake well. Eat them fresh, because thawed snook goes cottony.