Snapper Creek is one of the many canals that were dug in the past to help drain water from swampy land in South Florida. Today it has a saltwater intrusion dam and even after almost fifty years, it is a wild mangrove lined canal for its last mile into the bay.
I walked the north bank, which I believe is inaccessible now due to trespassing laws. As I walked, I made casts into the canal. I made them as parallel to the bank as I could in all the open spaces between the many Australian pines that lined both banks. Every hundred feet or so, a small drainage ditch was cut into the berm. Those cuts usually held at least one small snook, and I approached each cut very cautiously.
Snook were everywhere at that time. The canal was full of them. On this trip, I caught now fewer than ten on the trek from the bridge to the bay. I caught that many or more on the way back as the sun began to set in the west.
I also caught as many jack crevalles as I wanted to catch – probably thirty or more both on the way out and on the way back. It was a bank angler’s dream.
The snook were mostly short of the then 18 inch minimum length. I often thought that they might be one of the five species of snook that never gets bigger than eighteen inches. I thought that until we fished at the end of the canal on the point.
At the point where the canal enters Biscayne Bay, the mullet schools were thick early in the morning and late in the day. Small tarpon and some very large snook would be busting these schools in a feeding frenzy. All I had to do was get that Zara Spook I carried in a small box in my back pocket out there in the midst of them.
On this trip, I tied on the spook and waited for the mullet to start scattering. I was standing right on the point of land, looking south toward Gables-by-the-Sea when a huge snook erupted in the middle of a big school of mullet. I cast beyond the school and began “walking the dog” back toward me.
WHOOSH! That snook erupted on my lure and took off like a freight train. He ran a lot of 10 pond test line off my reel before he turned and started running sideways. Luckily, there were few mangroves for him to reach at the point.
For the next fifteen minutes, it was me and that fish. I got him close and he ran more line out. I fought him back and he ran again. Curiously – and I never could figure out why – he never jumped.
After that long fight, I waded out about knee deep to meet this monster in the water. I got him turned over on his side and slide him toward me. I had no net or gaff, so I lipped him – even before lipping a fish was ever popular.
My guess then was that he weighed twenty five to thirty pounds. His tail touched the ground when I held him, and his head was as high as my shoulders.
With no fanfare other than a pounding heart, no camera, and no witnesses, I released this big guy. I fished for a while longer at the point and caught a few jacks. As I began the walk back in the now dark evening, I wondered if he would make it. After all, it was a long fight on a hot day.
When I reached the first ditch, I heard that wonderful sound of a monster snook busting up a school of mullet back behind me. I looked back at the point and saw the splash, and I knew he was back at it, feeding once again.
That was many, many years ago. But, I have sources who tell me that the fishing is as good there now as it ever has been. Snook are there and they can be caught. I’ll suffer a few negative emails for this article – I’m giving away someone’s “secret” fishing spot. But, believe me – it was a favorite for more people than me long before these folks ever came along!
