Reggie’s Old Florida snobbery regarding the species had been unfair and misleading. A snook is among the most beautiful, powerful fish in the world: long, sleek, silver gray with yellow highlights, and a black racing stripe on its sides. As table fare, it is excellent, but the season was closed this time of year, and I am strictly catch-and-release anyway when it comes to game fish.
What little bit of breeze there was came from Mr. Gentry’s right. I babied the skiff around until he had an ideal left-hand wind. When we were eighty feet away, I wedged the pole as an anchor. “Don’t worry about the distance, we can always sneak closer. Take your time… If you’re not happy with the cast, just strip in and give her another shot.”
“Her?”
I said, “Loosen your drag a notch, too.”
“How can you tell it’s a female?”
“Male snook, at a certain age, become females. I’m judging by the size. I could be wrong-hurry up, move.”
Mr. Gentry, instead of hustling to the bow where he belonged, was grinning at his wife. “In that case, you’re up, Dolly. I’ll take video while you set a world’s record. Go on… my knees are clacking, I don’t think I can cast.” He pushed the fly rod at her.
It was a sweet gesture, yet I felt a sinking feeling. The husband was a better caster; a snook of any size requires strength to land, and this was no time for a polite debate.
Mrs. Gentry, thank god, wasn’t demure. Instead, she grabbed the rod and slipped up onto the casting deck with the aggressiveness of a falcon, then eyed her prey.
“Holy shitski,” she murmured, and began arranging line at her feet and doing all the other little things anglers do before launching their first cast.
I felt better after that.
The fish lay broadside my skiff. In the quiet pool of gold, a glazed tailfin maneuvered a slow pirouette; the fish resembled a cannon swinging into position.
“She’s not going anywhere,” I whispered. “No rush… nice and smooth, take your time,” but, in my head, I was thinking, For heaven’s sake, cast the darn thing.
Mrs. Gentry did. I had rigged four rods, all top-of-the-line Sage gear, but each with a different fly, or lure. The lures were feathered streamers, some with hackles, that I had tied myself. It’s something I like to do at night on my boat-when not engaged in dangerous behavior with married men. Her red-on-white streamer whistled past my ear on the first false cast, her tailing loop was so bad, but the woman regained her composure. She double-hauled… waited for the rod to load, hauled again, and then shot eighty feet of line with a loop that could’ve pierced armor.
The feathered lure, deployed by fifteen feet of invisible fluorocarbon thread, plopped softly on the surface. It landed beyond the fish and to the right.
Mr. Gentry, watching through his camera, said, “Hell of a cast, Dolly!” while I urged the woman, “Strip!… Strip!… Strip!…”
The rhythm was important. Slow, at first, like a funeral dirge. After that, it all depended on how a fish behaved.
My focus narrowed into a tunnel of turquoise and shadows. From my elevated perch, I could see the lure’s red hackles breathing clear water. I could see the fish’s dark mass pivot to find the disturbance in its golden pool, then move in slow pursuit.
“She’s on it,” I said. “She’s following… If she hits, let the rod do the work. Mr. Gentry, you be ready to clear knots, and make sure your wife’s not stepping on line… A little faster, ma’am.”
Strip!… Strip!… Strip!… Strip!… Mrs. Gentry’s right hand moved with the rhythm of a wounded bait, her technique perfect: knees bent, rod tip almost in the water.
The snook exited the pool. It was gaining speed when it slipped over the sandy rim and vanished into a field of shallow turtle grass.
“Where’d it go?”
“Oh, shitski… Did she spook?”
“Keep stripping… Strip faster,” I ordered, for the fish had reappeared not as a shadow but as a submarine wake only a few feet behind the feathery streamer.
Strip!Strip!Strip!-red hackles breathed a desperate rhythm as if trying to escape.
“Slower… Slower,” I said. “Okay… stop. Let your streamer sink… Now strip fast.”
That’s when the great fish hit. In the shallows, on a small boat, events happen simultaneously when thirty pounds of instinct and muscle react to the strictures of a fly line. The glassy surface boiled a whirlpool of sand; Mrs. Gentry’s rod melted into a question mark, bent by an inexplicable weight. The glassy surface exploded; salt droplets showered us. The massive fish shot skyward, levitated a slow-motion arc; then water imploded when it fell from the sky. My boat rocked; a stunning calm ensued. But only for a microsecond. A series of cannonball explosions added more waves and confusion, then the fish ran. It ripped off a hundred yards of line with such speed that, in Mrs. Gentry’s hands, the reel screamed of metal tolerances better endured by a machine gun.
“Let him run, keep the rod high,” I yelled. The push pole was free of the sand. I turned the skiff in pursuit. “Mr. Gentry, grab your wife’s belt. She almost went over on the first run, and I’d rather lose you than her right now.”
Laughter was a form of nervous release.
“My god, what a cast. Perfect, Dolly; perfect location. Hannah, you ever seen a better cast in your life? That fish has to weigh forty pounds.”
Nice, the proud way he spoke of his wife.
“More like thirty,” I said, yet wanted to believe he was right about the weight. He’d been right about something else: the fish might be big enough to set a new world record. Not in terms of weight overall, but in length, and possibly weight, too, for I’d tied a fairly light 1× tippet into the leader. Even with Bimini knots at both ends, the tippet would test out at less than fifteen pounds of breaking strength.
“We’ve got to get some line back. You ready, Mrs. Gentry?”
“Tell me what to do, but hurry. I’m shaking like a terrier,” she answered, then told her husband. “Doug, darling, do me a favor-please stop chattering and sit your butt down. I need to concentrate. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”
I smiled. In the first minutes of hooking a big fish, emotions ebb and flow. The exhilaration of a hookup is fast displaced by dramas that guarantee the uncertainty of landing a big fish.
Using the push pole, I got the boat moving in a straight line. It was the product of selecting small variations in fulcrum angles, then bowing the pole with my weight like a gondola driver. I poled and Mrs. Gentry reeled, or surrendered line, in a seesaw battle, depending on the course of the snook. Her husband provided encouragement. He often changed camera angles but did a good job of staying out of the way.
Ten minutes later, the fish hadn’t lost any speed or strength. Worse, it was dragging us steadily toward a bank of mangroves on the east side of Patricia Key. Mangrove roots are loaded with barnacles and coon oysters, all razor-sharp, so we had to turn the fish or lose him there. I was explaining what we had to do when the husband interrupted, saying, “What the heck is that boat doing? They see us, don’t they?”
I’d been aware of an approaching outboard but had paid no attention. I took a quick look off the stern. Speeding toward us was a wide, flat skiff, with a black catamaran hull, and engines powerful enough to plow a rooster tail. The driver steered from a tower built over the counsel. A couple of passengers sat below, the boat half a mile away but closing fast.
“He sees us just fine,” I said, and resumed what I was doing until the escalating roar demanded another look. When I turned, the boat was still on a collision course and close enough I could see the driver. He was a big-chested man with a handlebar mustache, and he wore a green golf visor backwards. He seemed to be looking directly at me, grinning, while his stereo boomed out music loud enough to hear the vibrating bass.