Dead Snook at Yankeetown
I cruised the Withlacootchee River this morning, after cleaning off a frosty windshield back in Gainesville, and making the drive. I went down to where this river empties into the Gulf of Mexico, taking stock of fish killed by the past week of chilly weather. And hoping not to see large numbers of dead snook, which is a tropical gamefish ill-suited to cope when icy weather arrives. At first it didn’t look bad; in a mile of river below Yankeetown Marina towards the Gulf, I tallied about 12 nice snook barely floating, three on the bank that had been there for days, a half dozen hardhead catfish and three ladyfish. The snook all had a little silt on them, after laying on the bottom and then slowly rising to the surface. They appeared in edible condition; their bellies were not swelled in the least. One area near the Gulf had perhaps a thousand dead silver mullet, most of them six inches long, some still alive, spinning in the water. I could have filled a bucket with mullet, and froze them for bait. None were spoiled.
And then on the ride back, at the closest house to the Gulf, where a green canoe sits on the dock, I veered left down a boat canal lined on one side with houses and docks. The canal has a dark bottom, perhaps 8-10 feet deep. And that’s when I noticed big, white shapes on the bottom below, lots of 12-pound snook. Dead, all dead! Perhaps 100 dead snook in 200 yards of canal. At one spot they lay below me in a heap, as if a school of 10 had died together. One appeared to be 25-30 pounds, the rest were smaller. On the shore, three buzzards strutted around a snook that had died a few days ago. One buzzard buried his face in the snook’s belly, a sign of thing to come for the next month.
Other predators were around. An otter surfaced near me, likely stuffed with fish. A hundred buzzards circled back in the marsh. And cormorants were having a field day with cold-stunned mullet. Very likely the area’s abundant wild hog population will benefit as well, feeding at night along the shoreline…
This is a grim scenario, and a sure sign that snook fishing won’t be as good this next summer. But we’ve been lucky since the last big freeze in 1989.
