The Getaway

This week has been a real mixed bag.  Early in the week, we had encounters with some really nice female snook. But by the end, it was real work.  Even so, we still managed to catch a fair number of fish.  We even caught our first redfish of the year. Well, not actually catching, but more of fighting until it was exhausted, but broken off as it was lifted up from the water to the dock.  I also managed to bulldog a big snook in. The picture for the blog this week is that faithful night when I finally scored a victory.

Snook can be very particular in their feeding and are greatly affected by the tides, winds, and pressures. Later in the week when the tides were out of sync, we saw shrimp floating by in the current, and watched in amazement as a snook come up, look at it from a couple of inches away, and turn away as if to either think it was an artificial bait, or he was so focused on wanting a SkipJack that he just couldn’t do it. Normally, if a shrimp is coming by like that, a group of snook will be fighting over which gulps it down. That is the real challenge of our artificial bait approach.  We have to fool the snook that what we have on a line is worth eating, and not tip them off that it is not even natural.

Jason was particularly effective in hooking the big ones this week.  Unfortunately, he was not as effective in getting them in hand once hooked. In total, we lost five or more large momma’s hooked. The equipment toll was quite high as each jig lost is about $4 a piece. Overall, I think we must have lost eight or nine jigs/baits of various types in the lips of hooked snook.  You can do the math, as I would rather not think about that part. And then there was the greatest loss of the week: Jason broke one of his more expensive rods while trying to lift a big snook up onto to the dock we were fishing from.  Even the best make a mistake every now and then.

Now in his defense, given the disadvantage of trying to fight a big snook from a dock, there are very few positive outcomes when a snook that big is on and gets locked into finding any of the dock pilings to wrap the line around and disconnect you from the line with a quick zing and a pop. So, the alternative to sure piling cut off, is to muscle them to the top and keep their head above the water or take your chances that you can dance your way around the dock redirecting their powerful runs away from the inevitable.  If you take the “keep their head up” option, then you must do so until either a) they get tired out thrashing about on the top, or b) you can manage to dance them around the end of the dock, between the pilings not on the dock, and the ones holding the dock in place and horse them down to the beach.  Deciding between these options is less spit second decision. Then if you aren’t cut off in the first two seconds, the next decision is in play.  “Can I fight her out for a bit longer” and hope to tire her out, or given the size and nasty disposition as seemed the case here, or “Should I just go ahead and try to lift her to the dock early?” So now you have another split second decision to make while wrestling twelve pounds of a grumpy battleship.  How to do the lift (and no this is not the kind of lift from Dirty Dancing). You can grab the leader, assuming you can reach it. That comes with the risk of losing your grip and having your finger end up sliding up onto the braided line, which will deliver a scalpel like cut faster than you can let go.  The other option is to lift them with your pole in a kind of smooth hoisting process.

In this specific case, Jason made the choice to swing her up. I began to take a video of the epic battle with my IPhone as I expected things to go on for a while. Unfortunately, I was taking video of his feet as I was trying to watch and video at the same time.  So as Jason began to swing the massive snook up, he grabbed the pole a bit higher on the shank than could be supported by the material in the pole.  The pole snapped with a crunch.  Jason was at the same time reaching for the leader, but the fish tossed it head and ripped the leader from his hand and drew the braided line across his finger, cutting into it.  He was forced to let go to avoid loss of digits.  We both stood there for a second in shock of the destruction. Jason tried to fight on with the short butt end of what was left of his shattered rod, but with no leverage, leviathan quickly rapped the piling and was gone.  I had quickly stopped the video once the pole broke, thinking “nothing else that happens at this point will be worth seeing or hearing”. To Jason’s credit, he was very controlled in his response.  Maybe the adrenaline had risen to such a level that his voice had quit working. Sometimes when such things happen, some French words can be spoken in the heat of the moment.

I guess you might ask, “If this landing of the snook is so difficult from a dock, why don’t you guys get a net.” Well, we have been discussing that very fact.  My first look online for a proper net gave me sticker shock, so I shut down my browser and decided to revisit the topic another day. If any of you all out there have a good suggestion for a salt water solution for this dilemma, feel free to leave a comment.

David