Loxahatchee snook

I can see I haven't posted here in a while, even though I've been fishing quite a bit. I'm fishing in Florida now, rather than up north in Kentucky.  We've had a number of cold fronts move through over the past couple months, which has complicated the fishing somewhat.  Nevertheless, I've gotten out quite a bit and had some success with fly and spinning tackle,

A couple of days ago I drove to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, which gives access to the Loxahatchee River. I've fished Jonathan Dickinson quite a bit, had some success with jack crevalle from time to time, but not caught much of anything recently.  I generally fish the area just upstream and downstream of the boat dock. But I recently viewed Pete Hinck's video about catching snook much further upstream than I typically go. He shot his video in June, whereas it's now February, when the water's much cooler.  Nevertheless, I thought it was worth going upriver a couple miles or so, where he and a buddy caught a bunch of snook last summer, to see if I'd find any for myself.

I followed an incoming tide upstream and made pretty good progress, casting to the shoreline every now and then but mostly trolling my Terror-eyes jig behind my kayak.  At one spot I saw a little bit of movement in the water close to some mangroves and cast nearby.  I got a quick strike, which turned out to be a jack.  A little further upstream, again close to the mangroves, I hooked something larger.  Once it jumped, I saw that it was a pretty decent sized snook, somewhere in the 20-25 inch range. I've caught snook before but this one was my biggest so far.

I continued upstream, waiting for the Lox to narrow down and turn twisty, as I had seen in Pete Hinck's video.  Apparently, he was much further upstream than I was, even though I'd already been pedaling my Hobie for over an hour.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the river yesterday--a couple dozen canoes and kayaks, a bunch of motorboats, and the JD Park tour boat.

At a certain point I turned around, as the tide itself did, and started headed back toward the boat ramp.  For a couple hours the only action I had was a couple follows from smaller snook than the one I'd caught.  I was still working the mangrove pockets and edges pretty hard but it wasn't looking like I'd catch anything else.

Around 4:30 I switched to a Mirrodine suspending twitch bait.  At a spot pretty far downriver, where it widened considerably, I threw the Mirrodine toward the shoreline and hooked something solid.  The fish didn't jump and I thought it was a good sized jack.  After several minutes I pulled it up to the surface and saw that it was a snook, somewhat bigger than the first one. I managed to get it close enough to the kayak to release it. It was actually not hooked in the mouth, but in the jaw below it, which made for an easy release.

So:  a day with not a lot of action, but catching those two snook made the trip well worth it.

Video of yesterday's trip can be seen at:  http://youtu.be/-oqMQ0BftRc