Also known as Linesider (Florida), Robalo (Sp.), Common Snook. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Hero spots in our coverage where Snook is in season for May. Click through for the live forecast.
Dock lights at night: anchor up-current, drift live pilchards or 5" jerk baits into the shadow line — snook hold facing into the current on the dark side of the light. Mangrove edges: cast tight to roots on the run-out tide; work plastics with twitch-twitch-pause. Beach: cruise the surf at dawn looking for cruising snook in 1–2 ft of water — sight-fish them with a soft plastic. The strike is unmistakable: heavy thump and instant run for structure.
Run-out tide along mangroves and dock structures is the textbook window — bait is pushed into ambush zones, snook intercept. Dock lights fire on the run-up too as bait drifts past. The first hour of a tide change at a known feeding lane is the absolute prime time.
Snook are night-active throughout, but the dark of the moon (new moon nights) is consistently the best dock-light window — less ambient light makes the light shadow lines starker, snook hunt aggressively. Full-moon nights can shut down the dock bite (they've fed all night already).
Florida: 28–32" or 28–33" slot (Gulf vs Atlantic — verify), 1 per person, snook permit required ($10 plus license), strict closed seasons (typically Dec 15 – Jan 31 and May 1 – Aug 31 Gulf side; Dec 15 – Jan 31 and June 1 – Aug 31 Atlantic side — verify FWC). The Gulf had recent further closures after red tides killed adult fish. Treat them as a recovering fishery; release with care.
From our training corpus of ~1.1M angler-logged catches across 14 regions. Last refreshed 2026-05-14.
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