‘Second best snook fishing night of my life.’ How 2 anglers won Big Art tournament

When captains Josh Jordan and Steve Brownlee entered the 2022 Big Art Memorial Snook Fishing Tournament, they weren’t sure how serious they’d take the two-night event.

“Our other teammates of team Naturdays, Josh Bibler and Kyle Dominion, couldn’t fish it that weekend,” Brownlee explained. “I was fishing a tournament the same Friday before it started, so that was tough to get going. The tournament started after the captains meeting Friday evening at 6 p.m. and we didn’t start fishing until about 10 p.m. that night.”

Despite losing four hours of fishing time, the pair made up for the lost time quickly.

“Within five minutes of starting to fish, we were hooking big snook nonstop! The first cast of the night I used dead bait, and the first fish was a 43-inch snook. Between Josh and I, we caught 40 snook, with 38 of them over 37 inches and the other two were 34 and 36 inches. It was the second best snook fishing night of my life,” said Brownlee.

The tournament format was to catch the biggest four snook in combined inches. On the big school of large snook, they were catching and releasing many over 40 inches using a combination of dead bait and live bait including mullet, ladyfish and other big offerings. For tackle they used 6500 to 12000 spinning reels with 65- to 100-pound braid and 60- to 100-pound leader.

“It seemed like they were everywhere and eating everything. We fished until 4 a.m., and it was basically just us working together to get in one fish after another. A few times we had double headers and had to decide who was going to help who bringing in a big fish. As soon as you got a bait in the water it was fish on!”

After the phenomenal fishing experienced on night one, they spent the next day regrouping for night two. They caught more bait including ladyfish, mullet and pinfish. With night two being a Saturday in June, the pair had an interesting request from mother nature.

“There were a lot of boats around where we were fishing and wanted them to leave the area. We were hoping it would rain and it did a little bit which sent many people home. Then the wind picked up and that cleared out the area more,” said Brownlee.

“That night we also got on good fishing and were able to upgrade two of the snook, getting a pair of 42-inch fish. At the end we had a 43-, two 42-s, and 41-inch snook.”

At the early Sunday morning weigh-in, the pair would take home prizes including biggest snook at 43 inches and most combined length, with their 168 inches comfortably beating second place Pro Marine at 157 inches and third place Double Bounty at 155 inches.

For the victory and side Calcutta pot, the duo won $4,200.

Junior team Still Jerkin would take 1st place with 152-inches, while Bimini Bae would take the ladies division with 115-inches.