First (Monster) Snook

I was with the kids in the pool this evening when Alex noticed a big fish swimming up the canal almost half out of the water. I looked up and recognized it as one of several monster snook that have been cruising the canal lately. These things are large! They typically go up one side of the canal, get to the end and come back down the other side. Our neighbor was over and we happen to be on the dock when he noticed the wake coming towards us on our side of the canal. Shortly thereafter, I pull this guy out of the water!

This beast is a little bit bigger than the other species we've pulled out of the canal and the good news is that he was swimming with another one at least as big as he was! After the shot, this guy went back in the water and swam off happily.

Man Time

The girls had a birthday tea party to go to today, so Danny and I got some live shrimp and set out to terrorize the inhabitants of our canal. We had a productive day, too, with some new species added to our log. We started off with a couple of mojarras that we didn't take pictures of. These were a little bigger than the ones we've caught before, but we didn't have a camera handy. We then took a break for lunch and went back out to probably the best half hour we've spent out there.


The mojarras started nibbling again, but this little snapper came up and snatched the shrimp out of their little mouths.


Right as we threw the snapper back in, I noticed that the other rod had gone tight on something else. Danny reeled that one in and we were surprised to see a moon fish on the hook. This was one of two that we caught back to back and a new species for us.

Danny took this picture himself using his new camera, that's why it's a little blurry. After we released the second moon fish, I threw another shrimp on the hook and put it right off of the dock. A little while later, I felt a tug and pulled up a little to see a small ray at the end of the line. Unfortunately, the hook wasn't set, so I couldn't pull him up for Danny to see.

The bigger news is that there are two very large snook patroling our canal. One has a lenght of line dragging behind it and the other doesn't. They're both in the 15+ lbs. range and carry their entourage on their backs. They have at least one small remora or other type of parasite fish stuck onto them. They swim by once every 10-15 minutes, right along the sea wall. They're both beautiful fish and you can tell that they're not dumb enough to go for any hooked bait. We'll report back if we're ever successful at hooking any of these guys.