Florida: Fish That Make My Heart Stop

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Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.

Snook are an absolutely incredible fish. I doubt I could ever bore of putting flies in front of them. I can't say that about many species, and as most of you know there isn't a species out there that I won't try to catch. Striped bass. Chain pickerel. Brook trout. And snook. I could fish for each every day for weeks on end and not bore of them I got two in an hour's time on the morning of our last day in Florida on Noah's and my first trip in 2017, and it left me wanting more. I had already gotten that many on this trip though both were tiny. And now, Noah and I were going west, to where we had left off. And I was excited. Very excited. Through the fog we drove, through Indiantown then Okeechobee. Then nothing for miles and miles. Then Arcadia, where most main street corners host piles of runaway oranges. Then more nothing, except the first significant  natural rises and dips of inland terrain we had seen in a week.

Then we reached our base camp west. These were familiar surroundings. It felt good to be back. Though I didn't know it, I was about to step into some of the best fishing of my life.

In the winter, snook seek refuge in the backcountry. They often travel many miles into freshwater, seeking good places to be lazy and as warm as possible, and jump out and grab an occasional snack. Snook are ambush predators. One need not look any further than the shape of their head and mouth to see this. Like pike, snook sit in wait on or near structure, and lunge out to inhale whatever hapless baitfish makes the mistake of wandering too close. To find catch these fish in the winter, you have to be mobile, you must be able to get in and out of tight creeks, and you need to bring a cast. This fishing really does remind me of pike fishing. We spent every hour of our time on the river throwing as tight into lay downs, mosquito ditch mouths, and overhanging ferns as we could, then aggressively retrieving our offerings back out.  More often than not the hit was on par with that of any esox species I've targeted. Quick, violent, and with intent to kill. They would miss sometimes, and even that reminded me of pike and pickerel. Snook don't have big teeth like esox, but their rasp and their razor sharp gill plates will tear through an inadequate leader material just as well. We used 40lb fluorocarbon most of the time we were targeting snook. I started out with 20lb mono, and got tired of changing after just getting one thump, then ditched 30lb after having a large snook abrade right through it on the take.

The river itself was hauntingly beautiful. This was old Florida. With all the life here, the abundant fish, the birds, it was too easy to forget that not that far away were places that had been robbed of this by the greed of man. It will take years before much of Florida recovers from the red tides of the last few years which were caused by polluted water discharges from Lake Okeechobee. The drone of airboats and paddling past the occasional sandbar cookout reminded us that we weren't that far from civilization. But slip way up into a skinny, Brazilian pepper lined creek, and you are as good as alone. You also stand a chance of finding fish that haven't seen a fly in a while.

After missing a few and loosing one, I got my first west cost snook of the trip. He was on a laydown with at least on other fish. The take was spectacular, the fight equally so. Even a small snook puts a serious bend in a 10wt rod. Standing in my kayak, I was forced to maneuver the rod around the bow and stern carefully. These fish seem to know that staying under the yak is advantageous and they do it a lot. Once I got it topside, I could admire a very handsome fish.

common snook, Centropomus undecimalis

Of five takers on our first evening I landed only one. I was not going to let that kind of percentage happen again.

Micropterus floridanus occupy much of the same water these snook do in the winter.

The next evening we went back to much of the same water. Noah had still not gotten his snook, so we split the water in what I thought was his favor. What I hadn't accounted for at the time was that snook seem to like me. A few casts into my first short drift a fish came out and inhaled my Game Changer. It wasn't a big fish but it was an acrobatic fish, spending as much of the fight out of the water as in.

Noah didn't get a fish in his longer drift. We moved to a stretch where he had a bunch of action the day before. I split off to hit a couple lay downs where I had seen snook blow up bait the previous evening while he worked that bank. I fished the first lay down. Nothing. I fished the next lay down. As I accelerated my strip, making the GC glide back and forth at speed, a fish that I hadn't seen had followed the fly 15ft from the structure and slammed it right next to the kayak. The fish took a moment to right itself before blasting under the kayak and over to the other side of the river with startling speed. I reached the rod tip around the bow of the kayak and as much tension on the fly line as I could without letting it burn through my fingers. That snook went 70ft in just seconds. When it decided that run was over it started jumping. Six times she cam up. Big, thrashing, violent jumps, sending spray like sparks from illumination by the setting sun. This wasn't a huge snook but it was my biggest at the time, and it took some skill to land her. A paddled over to a sandbar, holding the fish by the lip and allowing her to regain some energy. After a quick photo, I knelt in the water, felt her power up, and watched her swim away. I then went and just laid down on the sand bar, laughing to myself and letting the mosquitoes bite my ankles. I was satisfied. In the last days of 2018 I was catching gorgeous snook in gorgeous weather in a gorgeous place.

Little did I know that on the first day of the new year I would catch a snook that would make this one look little.