One could get caught up in preparations for fall hunting, Holiday festivities, or springtime and completely fail to realize that December has plenty of redeeming qualities for us kayak anglers. Typically, we would be looking to our lagoons for the start of sight fishing season as the waters cool, but it’s impossible to tell where the water clarity will be with as wet of a rainy season we had. Anglers should be looking to fill that potential void and stay in the protected lagoon for your outing and find snook hiding from the cooler waters for some great catch and release action. The explosion of snook in our lagoon waters has been hard to miss for those exploring in their kayaks or boats. Roughly a decade of warm winters has expanded the range of this tropical/sub-tropical species. Traditionally the Brevard County and Volusia County line was the northern cutoff for consistent snook action and now there is viable fishing all the way to Georgia. This also held true for juvenile tarpon due to both their intolerance of water temperatures below 54 degrees and the likelihood of prolonged freezes in North East Florida. Unlike the tarpon our snook will not necessarily leave for warmer parts of the lagoon system to the south as winter settles in. Most will just hunker down and hope for the best. With that in mind look for deeper canals with docks, Deep mangrove shorelines, and muddy wind protected areas to become home base as these fish look to withstand the oncoming cooler nights associated with cold fronts.
Both shrimp and baitfish imitating soft plastics rigged weedless excel in this fishing as they can get in those tight spots under the cover (mangroves and docks) where you will get the majority of your snook hits. I tend to run a leader of 30lbs to withstand chaffing from the fish with its rough mouth and encrusted cover you find them in. In years past when we had more frequent cold winter events with a few freezes mixed in we had a moderate snook population with some decent fish sprinkled throughout the lagoons of Brevard. Now with consistent warm winters and lack of freezes to beat the population back our lagoons play host to some downright large specimens for this hard fighting fish. Do not be surprised when a heavy snook does its best to break your heart buy teaching you a lesson about big angry fish in heavy cover. I will look for this action to be hot for my kayak charter clients throughout December, but it will wain as the waters get a little too cold and the fish become increasingly lethargic as winter drags on.
