Snapper with the golden touch and lots of fight

Golden snapper is one of the most popular species for anglers around the NT.

A chart depicting the life cycle of golden snapper.

Golden snapper is one of the most popular species for anglers around the NT.

They fight hard, taste great and can grow to at least 90cm and 12.4kg and live up to 20 years of age.

Unfortunately, despite growing reasonably quickly as juveniles, growth slows substantially upon reaching maturity.

Maturity for this species is reached at 63cm or eight years of age for females and at 47cm or five years of age for males.

Compared to other fish species, golden snapper are quite long lived, slow growing and late maturing.

These biological traits combined with the golden snappers’ schooling nature make them easy to target and prone to over-exploitation.

This species undergoes a prolonged spawning period from early September to late April.

Aquaculture research has shown that large females (72-75cm TL) can spawn at least 2.83 million eggs over the course of four consecutive nights, suggesting that this species is quite fecund.

As with many other species, larger female golden snapper will produce more eggs than smaller individuals.

Once hatched, golden snapper larvae are typical of most tropical reef fishes and enter the near shore environment to settle to benthic substrates.

As larvae grow into juveniles they move to estuarine habitat where they remain until maturity whereupon they move to deeper, offshore waters.

Golden snapper have also been shown to suffer from barotrauma-related mortality.

As a precaution, it is recommended that they are not targeted for catch and release in water deeper than 10m.