Snook season closed

What might turn out to be the greatest fish kill in Florida's modern history resulted from this year's unprecedented cold snap. Ron Taylor, lead snook biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, called the kill "historic."

"We've never had 10 straight days where the air never got above 60," Taylor said. "We've had reports of 15,000 snook dead, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are 10 times that out there underwater dead, too."

Taylor's reaction, along with hundreds of reports from anglers, led the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to place an emergency closure on the spring snook season, scheduled to open March 1.

The closure began Saturday, and fishing for the popular gamefish will not begin until Sept. 1, pending further review of stocks.

While dead fish float quickly in warm water, the icy water still around throughout much of the state is effectively refrigerating the tens of thousands of dead fish, and it might be some time before decomposition causes their belly gasses to expand and float the carcasses.

But it's sure that this is a kill at least on a par with the Christmas freeze of 1989, when Taylor estimated 10,000 dead snook in the Tampa Bay area alone.

What's more, huge numbers of other species have died. Trout, jacks, redfish, ladyfish and all sorts of non-game species are dead by the hundreds of thousands.

One painful loss that might not make itself felt for many years is the baby tarpon killed in estuarine creeks. These slow-growing fish would have been the mature silver kings of 10 years from now, but many are lost. Mature adults migrate south and move to much deeper water, and presumably few or none of them suffered. However, at least one year-class is sure to be gone among the younger fish, which stay in the shallowest of backwaters for their first several years of life.

Bonefish, another tropical species, were also killed around Miami and the upper Keys.

The conservation commission also has placed an emergency closure on harvest of tarpon and bonefish, through March 31. Neither species is commonly harvested for food, so this ruling won't affect anglers much.

The cold spell was particularly insidious because, unlike the local kills resulting from water pollution, such as in the St. Lucie Inlet area, or the kills resulting from red tide along the west coast, this kill was incredibly widespread.

Bob Pucinelli, former Bay area outdoors radio host, reported from the Everglades that the temperatures in some creeks there was 47.5 degrees, far below the 55 that is usually lethal for snook. The Bay area temperature was 41 degrees in many canals that had provided cold refuges for the fish in other seasons, according to captain Scott Moore, a leading Bay area snook conservationist. And north of Tampa Bay, the water was far too cold for survival of snook that had gradually migrated there over a succession of 10 warm winters. In fact, water on the flats was so cold, it killed some reds and trout in the Homosassa area.

There will be survivors, to be sure. Fish in spring outflows such as those in the Chassahowitzka, Homosassa and Crystal rivers should be fine, as will those huddled into the hot-water outflows from the state's many power plants.

Mature snook are also known to gather around offshore reefs in winter, particularly from Fort Myers southward, as well as along the east coast as far north as Cape Canaveral. Odds are all of these fish survived and will be moving inshore this spring to repopulate the shallows.

State biologists estimate there are around 335,000 snook at least 20 inches long in state waters, fish the size most often caught by anglers. How many of those fish are among the tens of thousands dead remains to be seen, but it surely will be a considerable number, probably enough that anglers this spring will note a marked decline in the number of fish appearing in the spawning areas around the beaches and passes.

Snook populations were in excellent shape going into this winter, and it's possible the stocks can survive the kill without a marked decline in the quality of fishing.

The shutdown, however, will give the fish a chance to regroup and redistribute without fishing pressure, and it's probably a good move to help them get jump-started.