Sick Snook Photos

Heywood
Posts: 4922
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm

Sick Snook Photos

Post by Heywood »

I found these on Google+. I have no idea on the history or location. They are supposedly Tampa, but I cant confirm it. Absolutely Sick. :pukeright:

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
"Anytime I shag a buddies wife I always cut the lawn when I'm done " ~ The Leg End ~
Todd
PFTS Chairman
PFTS Chairman
Posts: 10850
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: St. Petersburg, Florida
Contact:

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by Todd »

No ice!!
You know what La Quinta means in English? Behind Dennys. MarkM
GILs_GONE_WILD
Posts: 2533
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Among the Mangroves of W. Central FL

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by GILs_GONE_WILD »

Ice wasn't needed. You caught soooooo many back then that the boatload you see was a half an hour or hour at best. ;)
GIL

"Only the half-mad are wholly alive." ~~~ Edward Abbey
User avatar
jbdba01
Mr. Fishing Reports
Mr. Fishing Reports
Posts: 1173
Joined: Mon Oct 11, 2010 8:09 am

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by jbdba01 »

First one is Oldsmar. Those last two sure look like Egmont, but who knows. Rovallo - that's what we called them overseas.

Image
JB
Rik
Posts: 14006
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Sarasota
Contact:

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by Rik »

Did they eat them back then or did they become fertilizer?
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley
User avatar
fishshooter99
Posts: 121
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 11:18 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by fishshooter99 »

I know the issue if Snook limits/seasons has been a hot topic after the cold snap a couple of years ago. I for one hope that a very tight reign is kept on them. While they are delicious, the pleasure of seeing one explode on a lure is much more important to me.

You gotta' wonder if some day, decades from now, someone will post a picture of a boat load of mullet and it'll look like a travesty.
Gary
expatriate Floridian living in the foriegn land of Georgia
sfurman
Supporter 2010 - 2013
Posts: 1214
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Tampa, Steinhatchee

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by sfurman »

Not cool...
My posts are my opinion only.
Steve
22acrowd
Posts: 129
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:11 pm

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by 22acrowd »

Stinking soap fish. They taste horrible! Good riddance!
Rik
Posts: 14006
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Sarasota
Contact:

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by Rik »

22acrowd wrote:Stinking soap fish. They taste horrible! Good riddance!
That's why I asked the fertilizer question. Anyone know about when it was that folks learned to skin them before cooking?
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley
22acrowd
Posts: 129
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:11 pm

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by 22acrowd »

I'm guessing those were caught to feed people, not cats. I'd say those were taken in the 1940s to early 50s. Protein was scarce during the war years. Post WW2 is when snook started being harvested for human consumption. Strict regulations on snook weren't put in place till the late 50s.
sfurman
Supporter 2010 - 2013
Posts: 1214
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Tampa, Steinhatchee

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by sfurman »

I believe they were removed from commercial take in 1956, the pictures above show why that was necessary.
My posts are my opinion only.
Steve
FrankC
Posts: 1601
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Pooler, GA

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by FrankC »

You really cannot compare yesterday to today, as things were much different in the past. Thankfully we have rules which protect species today.

Back in the late 40's, people hooked burlap sacks to oar locks and put their fish in the bags. I have seen small boats return to the dock with several full bags of trout and bass and two or three fishermen. Neighbors and friends ate well. I know our meals would have been less without fish and game due to rationing until after the war, so don't think the fish and game were wasted even before ice chests became readily available.

The 50's were a time of plenty, but those conditions are very different today. Sensible regulations gave us more deer and turkeys than ever before due to proper management. Fishery management has come a long way also.

The comment about mullet is well taken, and without good management, that may come to pass sooner or later.

We had a large commercial shad fishery in this area for years. Once the move to mono nets took place, it has dried up. When my girls were young, it was no problem to troll up a mess of shad during the spring, but you catch very few today.

Diamondback terrapins were thick in local waters during the 70's and 80's but are fairly scarce today. Crab traps account for much of this loss.

A plant on the river we fished while growing up has been poisoned with formaldehyde and other chemicals in recent years, so we do not fish there anymore.

The king macks we enjoyed for the table in the past have been subjected to mercury, so care must be exercised in eating them. I would not eat the roe which we enjoyed either.

Proper management is a work in progress, and we should all be thankful it is underway today.
User avatar
Paul
PFTS SPONSOR
PFTS SPONSOR
Posts: 950
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: St. Petersburg
Contact:

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by Paul »

Oldsmar used to be called "snook haven"

the 40 to 70's were different times

We always ate fresh fish never store bought. and my dad grew up eating mostly Dove, Rabbit, squirrel and definitely fish.....then killed it and my granny cooked it

Yes the pictures are sad

but the reason we have bag limits and regulations is to help species grow. You learn from the past to preserve the future

Snook, Redfish, trout and Flounder are all tasty, but limits are in place for good reason
Paul Silvernail
"Pimpin' ain't easy....but it's neccessary"
seeinred
Posts: 1693
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: closer to the sun
Contact:

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by seeinred »

People always ask me if I could fish anywhere, where would I want to fish. My answer is always right here in Tampa Bay... 100 years ago.
For more kayak fishing reports, tips, and fishing charters please visit;
http://tampabaykayakcharters.com/

Spencer
FrankC
Posts: 1601
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm
Location: Pooler, GA

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by FrankC »

I don't think people appreciate just how fast the population has grown. Back in the mid eighties, dealing with the power company in St. Pete, they told me that the population had doubled in the preceding 10 or so years. Goodness knows how large it grew since that time.

I visited St. Pete in 1959, and it was not as large a town as you might have expected.

The areas where we hunted in the 50's and 60's are pretty much covered by subdivisions today. We caught bass and bream in large numbers even then, especially when rubber worms became available. The site where I shot my first double on quail is now part of a Church campground.

My Grandmother's grandfather was an early settler along the Indian River and had to follow the mail man to travel along the coast. The mail man had boats on the waters which had to be crossed and they traveled by foot. Commerce was by the way of boats or horses. We found the home area for my Mother using a nautical chart when she asked us to show her where the family had settled, as it listed the point where the boats were loaded in the past.

Sure wish they had left me a lot along that river.

Seeinred, you would not have to travel 100 years back in time to find paradise for fishing in your area. My children released a hundred trout before breakfast from time to time. Three in the boat would fish and my job was to release the fish.
User avatar
bicoastal
Posts: 58
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 7:51 am
Location: Brandon

Re: Sick Snook Photos

Post by bicoastal »

while not as sickening as the snook photos above, still depressing to see the degradation of the fishery since the emergence of sport fishing in pop culture.

Source: NPR


They came, they fished, then snap! They posed. Right in front of their Big Catch — and thereby hangs a tale.

Image

For generations, tour boats have been collecting fishing enthusiasts in Key West, Fla.: taking them for a day of deep sea casting; providing them rods, bait, companionship; and then, when the day ends, there's a little wharf-side ceremony. Everyone is invited to take his biggest fish and hook it onto the "Hanging Board"; a judge compares catches, chooses a champion, and then the family that caught the biggest fish poses for a photograph. The one up above comes from 1958. Notice that the fish on the far left is bigger than the guy who, I assume, caught it; and their little girl is smaller than most of the "biggies" on the board. Those aren't little people. Those are big fish.

Here's another one from the year before — 1957. Again, the fish loom larger than the people. Check out the guy in the back, standing on the extreme right, next to an even bigger giant.

Image

Charter companies have been taking these photos for at least 50 years now. In some cases, they've operated from the same dock, fished in the same waters and returned to the same Hanging Board for all that time — which is why, when a grad student working on her doctoral thesis found a thick stack of these photos in Key West's Monroe County Library, she got very excited. figured she could use this parade of biggies to compare fish over time.

For example, here's a photo taken a decade after the previous shots — during the 1965-1979 period:

Image

The fish in that one are still big, but no longer bigger than the fishermen. It's the same in this next one. Grandma and Grandpa are decidedly the biggest animals in the photo:
Grandma and Grandpa are the much bigger than the biggest fish in this "prize catch" photo from the 1960s.

Image

Let's keep going. This next photo was taken during the 1980-1985 period. It's a group shot, one of many. Everybody's displaying their biggest catches. Loren visited this wharf in 2007 and discovered, as she writes in , that these display boards "had not changed over time," which meant she could measure the board, and then (using the photos) measure the fish. Clearly, these fish are way smaller than the ones from the 1950s:
Prizewinning fish continued to get smaller and smaller, as this photo from the same Hanging Board at the turn of the current century shows.

Image

How much smaller? Adjusting for time of year, and after checking and measuring 1,275 different trophy fish, she found that in the 1950s, the biggest fish in the photos were typically over 6 feet — sometimes 6 feet 5 inches long. By the time we get to 2007, when Loren bought a ticket on a deep sea day cruise and snapped this picture ...

Image

... the biggest fish were averaging only a foot, or maybe a little over. That's a staggering change. The biggest fish on display in 2007 was a shark, and sharks, Loren calculated, are now half the size they used to be in the '50s. As to weight, she figured the average prizewinner dropped from nearly 43.8 pounds to a measly 5 pounds — an 88 percent drop.

It's no big surprise, I suppose, that fish in the sea are getting smaller. The curious thing, though, is that people who pay 40 bucks to go fishing off Key West today have no sense of what it used to be like. Had Loren not found the fish photos, there would be no images, no comparative record of what used to be a routine catch.

In her paper, Loren says that the fishing charter tours are still very popular. The price of the tour hasn't dropped (adjusting for inflation), only the size of the fish. Looking at the photos, people now seem just as pleased to be champions as those "champs" back in the '50s, unaware that what's big now would have been thrown away then. Loren says she suspects that people just erase the past "and will continue to fish while marine ecosystems undergo extreme changes."
Wilderness Systems Tarpon 140 The Red Rocket
Wilderness Systems Ride 135 Sage
Post Reply