Snookered

The lure of the persnickety species is stronger than the need for sleep.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 6, 2000

[Times art]

In Florida, our spring is sweet and all too short. Summer, with its bloodhound-breath humidity, monsoon rains and cantankerous cyclones, lurks just over the horizon.

The antidote to my springtime blues is venturing out after dark. Balmy breezes confound the mosquitoes while the chuck-will's-widows trill in open fields. Midnight comes and goes. Yawning -- I got only two hours' shut-eye -- I cross the causeway to Clark Nash's house on Treasure Island.

He's wide awake and full of enthusiasm, darn him. He is in love with spring.

"Take that shirt off," he commands. I forgot and wore white. He tosses me a black T. "And wear this black cap."

We are commandos -- on a quest for the wily Centropomus undecimalis, the fish known as snook.

Tampa Bay, a bad southwest wind, a bad incoming tide. Clark prefers breezeless nights and a high outgoing tide. But a man can't have everything, and if he did, he'd be bored silly. "We're going to have to tickle these fish into biting," Clark says. In other words, they won't be jumping into the boat.

Snook are persnickety. Sometimes they bite only on a full moon, except for the times they bite on the waxing, waning or new moon. Some anglers swear they bite best when salt marsh mosquitoes swarm in clouds and an east wind rustles the palms. Others say no, snook bite best when you carry a rabbit's foot in your left rear pocket and a 1941 penny in the bottom of your right shoe.

Snook grow to about 50 pounds. They are no sleek, silver, greyhounds. A snook is a cigar-smoking dock worker, a little plump and a little pugnacious. A fish only an orthodontist could love, a snook has a toothless lower jaw that protrudes from here to Mexico. Snook have a long black stripe on each side, and a yellowish pallor like an advanced alcoholic.

I caught my first when I was a kid. It was small, like me, but I could hardly have been more proud. A few weeks later I caught a 12-pounder on a Creek Chub Darter lure. Slinging the snook across my bike handlebars, I sped home to pound my chest like Tarzan in front of my dad.

Snook fight hard, jump high and swim bullishly for underwater obstructions. On a dinner plate, surrounded by a baked potato, asparagus and smothered in butter and onions, a snook tastes sweeter than the kisses of Esmerelda. (Esmerelda? She sells bait at the tackle store).

Soon after landing my first big snook I became a junkie. Schoolwork shmoolwork. Who could study when snook were biting on a beautiful spring night?

Years later I became an absentee husband and father. I'd wake at 3:30 a.m., snook fish until 7:30, go to work, come home, eat supper and fall into bed. Friends who lured me away from home after sundown were certain I suffered from narcolepsy.

My cars stank of fish. I hated the sun. My complexion changed from tan to albino. My teeth sharpened; a mirror failed to capture my reflected image. I was sure someone would drive a stake through my heart.

But then I recovered, not from a 12-step program, but by virtue of moving from Miami to Tampa Bay. Snook anglers in West Central Florida, I learned to my sorrow, were cautious with advice.

"Where you catch that nice snook?" I'd ask a lucky angler pathetically at the marina.

Old Salty, displaying toothless gums, would wink at his companions before addressing the Rube.

"In the mouth," he'd shout, and the school of snook anglers inhabiting the dock would roar with laughter before tar-and-feathering me for asking a stupid question.

Clark Nash seldom carries tar and feathers on his boat, thank goodness. Unlike most snook anglers I have known, he seems to be a nice guy. He even has a real job, managing a big department store at Tyrone Mall.

Don't think working for a living suggests he's a grown up. Although he is 48, he is a confirmed snook fisher, which means he takes his vacation in the spring, which also means he confuses days and nights.

"After a while you get used to not sleeping," he says.

Clark learned to fish during Florida vacations as a boy. He moved to Pinellas for good after graduating from Eckerd College. Those four years of study were well spent. For example, he learned that snook are best caught after sundown.

"I caught five keepers the other night," he says. "I lost nine others."

Clark likes to fish near docks where lights shine into the water and nature takes its course. First, minnows and shrimp are attracted to lights like a moth to a flame. Then snook show up to eat the shrimp and the minnows. Finally it's Clark, keeping a low profile in his black T-shirt, who arrives to catch the snook.

We're using live shrimp as bait.

"Cast as close to the dock as you can," Clark whispers.

Plunk.

"I just heard shrimp meeting wood," Clark says.

Yes, on my first cast, I snag the dock like a rookie.

A woman I know had been doubtful that snook anglers spend the long spring night in a productive manner. No, she was sure they consume vast quantities of rum, sing sea chanteys and lie in the filth that coats the bottom of any boat. No such luck. Snook anglers have to be physically and mentally alert. Sadly, Clark never swills grog. He gulps caffeine-laced Mountain Dew until his eyes bulge.

"Yoweee!" he shouts. Snook on. His rod bows to the water.

The problem with snook is where they live. Inches from the dock, they have every advantage. Clark's snook lunges for the barnacles. The line pops like a firecracker.

I catch a snook and try not to yodel in the dark. Clark measures my trophy. It's 25 inches, a nice snook back when I was a kid. But now a legal snook must be 26 inches long but less than 34. I watch dinner swim away.

We catch a few others. They're under the legal limit, too.

Finally, about dawn, with the eastern sky growing bright, I hook my Moby Dick.

Moby pulls and I pull and he swears and I swear. He spits out his cigar and I spit out my Mountain Dew. The rod dips and the line screams off the reel and I drag the bilious creature away from the dock and all is going my way until -- it always happens this way -- the line breaks, parts, explodes.

The snook's razor-sharp gill-cover has sliced my line like it was bologna.

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