Permit fishing in the Canal system? Florida freeze kills lots of snook.

Well it has been so unusually cold here in Florida unusual things are starting to happen. Thinks like find permit in the Canal system. Usually these guys are roaming the flats, bridges, near the power plants in the winter, and offshore wrecks. But the lat week in Florid it has been in the 20′s for several days. Well our population of fish just can’t take that kind of sustain cold. Snook, one of our most popular game fish can’t live bellow much lower temperature than 60 degrees. That is why in the winter time they goes up rivers, power plants, deep muddy canals, fresh water springs for safe haven.

However this last blow has killed off thousands of them. Not only snook but species like, lady fish, grouper, trout, catfish and lots of variety of of bait fish. This very sad to see but I guess it is they way mother nature works.

I was down in Matlacha Florida today looking to take photos of tailing redfish. We say lots of dead fish in the canal system. Most of the species were lady fish, and catfish. We did not see many snooks but  there were plenty dead. They tell me the snooks gets picked up and poached when they die, even though it is against the law to do so.  In the flats we did not see one one snook. We did sea trout and redfish pushing. The tides were low enough,  but for whatever reason the fish did not want to tail for us.

The water temperature was very cold and I believe that made them pretty lethargic.

Driving by a canal we saw what we thought were jacks but they were actually permit. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen permit in the canal system. It must have been unprecedented freezing temperature to bring them inshore in  this coast during the day.

Yep that is a beer bottle the fish is swimming next to.

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