Lone Star linesiders are back
[Ah ... snook: my favorite saltwater gamefish. I wrote this for The Snook Foundation's newsletter. Look for more about linesiders on this site.]
Austin kayak angler Arnold "Liverdog" Wells was fishing on the Corpus Christi Bay side of Packery Channel in November 2005 when he hooked-up with what he thought was the trout of a lifetime.
"I cast up directly along the side of this barge with a popping cork and a speck rig," he said. "No sooner than it hit the water, the fish took it. I was thinking 30-inch trout."
Nope. Try 23-inch snook, something Wells said he knew was a special treat.
"I heard it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal to catch a snook in Texas, and even then you usually have to go to Port Isabel or South Padre to do it."
Not anymore.
Reports of "keeper" fish, in the 24-28-inch slot, have been coming in with increasing frequency from Port Mansfield to Freeport. The new Packery Channel jetties in Corpus Christi, between Mustang and Padre Islands, last summer and fall yielded daily catches of robalo – some close to 40 inches.
And the fish are back for the 2006 season.
David McKee, a biology professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, sent some of his graduate students out to the rocks with masks and snorkels this spring for a look-see.
“They told me there was a snook in every crevice and crack out there,” he said.
Rockport angler Bill Hoffman (pictured above) found his 37-inch snook that way, while hunting gray snapper with a speargun in September of this year.
"There were some big caverns under the rocks, and those big old snook were just laying up in there," Hoffman said. "Two of those snook were probably from my shoulder to my foot, over 4 feet long."
Hoffman spent the next two weeks throwing everything he had at fish he knew were there. His big fish finally fell to a live finger mullet on a dirty, outgoing tide.
"To catch one of those, you have to be persistent," Hoffman said.
“There’s some evidence of an increase in abundance in South Texas, which is encouraging,” said Randy Blankinship, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist who manages the state’s fisheries in the Lower Laguna Madre. “In particular, what’s encouraging is larger numbers of snook showing up in bay systems farther north than they’ve been in any numbers in the past couple of decades.”
Blankinship said the resurgence of snook catches on the middle Texas coast is reminiscent of the 1930s and 1940s, when there was a thriving commercial snook fishery in the state.
Louis Rawalt, a legendary denizen of Texas’ barrier islands, caught the state record snook on New Year’s Day in 1937. The 57.5 pound fish was part of a 999-pound single-day catch he sold in Port Aransas. The big fish came from the beachfront very near a historic pass – Packery Channel – that had closed nearly a decade earlier after the dredging of a large ship channel to the north.
In 1893, more than 20,000 pounds of snook were harvested for market from Galveston Bay, on the upper Texas coast. In 1928, commercial fishermen landed nearly a quarter million pounds of robalo statewide. 
For reasons that still are not clear, by the early 1960s, commercial snook fishing in Texas had collapsed completely.
Over-fishing, disease, periodic climate change, agricultural development and the damming of Texas rivers all may have played a role in the disappearance of linesiders from vast swathes of the Lone Star littoral.
Whatever the reason for the decline of snook over the second half of the 20th century, it appears they are now making a resurgence, along with tarpon and an unprecedented abundance of gray snapper.
Biologists speculate that a series of mild winters has allowed the semi-tropical gamefish to thrive in increasing numbers north of the species’ stronghold near the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and there is even some evidence that the fishery is enjoying recruitment of juveniles of at least one of the three endemic species in mid-coast creeks and rivers.
“It’s real encouraging to see evidence of even a slight increase in abundance in bay systems farther north,” said Blankinship. “The fisheries management strategies under which we operate today are much more conducive to their continued success. I would be very optimistic about the future of snook, and continued abundance, not only in the Lower Laguna Madre, but also throughout South Texas and the Coastal Bend.”
You should know ...
Recreational size and bag limits for common snook in Texas were tightened in 1995, from a daily bag of three fish between 20 and 28 inches to a daily bag of one fish in a 24-28-inch slot. That conservative slot virtually ensures that any common snook retained by an angler is a male.
Despite snook’s well-deserved reputation as tasty table fare, many Texas anglers eschew keeping any of the fish, preferring to release their linesiders to fight another day. It’s an approach Texas fishing guides promote.
In extreme South Texas, where the snook fishery is well established, several guides target the species. Among them are Capt. Ernest Cisneros for pluggers and Capt. Eric Glass for those who prefer the long rod. Getaway Adventures Lodge, a Field & Stream magazine “Top 10” fishing destination, also puts together snook packages for fly anglers out of Port Mansfield.
Update on snook science
Snook aficionados in Florida and Texas have long shared tips on how to best pursue the elusive gamefish. Now scientists in the two Gulf states are collaborating on research to better understand the animal’s life history and to help ensure its future.
As part of the state’s ongoing fisheries monitoring, Texas biologists collect fin clips from all Texas snook captured in TPWD gill nets and bag seines. The fin clips provide valuable genetic information that one day may shed light on where snook caught in different areas along the coast originate.
A recent agreement between Florida’s FWC and its Texas counterpart will allow geneticists to share information about populations in both states.
In another development, aquaculture researchers at Mote Marine Laboratories in Sarasota and the University of Texas Marine Science Institute at Port Aransas are collaborating on several projects that they hope will lead to cost-effective stocking programs in both states.
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