Have you ever been to St. Petersburg? Yeah, I hear you.

I'll never forget one of my best friends' descriptions of St. Pete - drab, she said.

Ok, well if you get past that part of it, wind your way down to the waterfront on the Bay side down around the end of 8th Ave SE. There you'll find one of the most impressive buildings a fisherman has ever seen - the State of Florida's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

This multi-million dollar facility housed Thursday and Friday the Snook V Symposium (that's V as in Roman numeral five like the Super Bowl). This meeting happens every few years and is put together by snook man Ron Taylor's crack staff of biologists to better understand the inner workings of the oh-so valuable snook - perhaps South Florida's most intense gamefish.

East met West with about 200 snook fishermen in attendance. Personally, I was worried that this meeting would have a really west-coast bias, but was glad it did not.

Here's who was giving input from ther east side of the equation.
Mike Holliday, Stuart, Florida Fishing Weekly
Jeff Weakley, Jensen Beach, Florida Sportsman
Tom Twyford and Barry Brimacomb, WPB Fishing Club
Gary Borland, WPB, guide and Penn Tackle
Mike Knepper, Stuart, angler
Roger Birt, Sebastian, angler
Pete Schulz, Jupiter, tackle shop owner
Jim Whittington, Tequesta, FWRI scientist
Steve Waters, Sun Sentinel
Sue Cocking, Miami Herald

Take home messages to come out of it:
Don't pinch the tail to measure
Do something about habitat loss, water quality, algae, and red tide
Big snook are looking good, small snook may be suffering

Anyway, stay tuned for more developments that will undoubtedly come out of this meeting as it wraps up today. Rest assured, that snook are being closely watched.

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