Catching a 30-pound snook on any tackle is a feat worth remembrance. Catching one on a flyrod is an angling achievement that many thought would never happen. But it did happen, a few years ago in Everglades National Park.

Fishing out of Chokoloskee, about 30 miles east of Naples, Captain Pete Villani and his angler, Dr. Rex Garrett of Sarina, Ontario, were poling down a murky tidal creek just after sunup when Villani spotted the tell-tale yellow dorsal and tail of a snook finning along at the surface.

"It had been unusually cold for April," Villani said. "The sun was shining on the shallow mud flats, and I think the fish was in there trying to warm up."

Garrett, an experienced fly-caster but a novice to snook fishing, presented a red and white deer hair MirrOlure Fly, a slider with weighted eyes, on 8-weight tackle.

"The fish ignored the first three casts," said Villani. "It sank out of sight on the third toss, and I thought that was it. But in a little while, it popped back up."

Garrett placed the fly just right on the fourth toss, and the fish took immediately. It was only after the battle went beyond 10 minutes that Villani realized how big the linesider really was. It scaled 30 pounds, 4 ounces-a new all-tippet record in the International Game Fish Association flyfishing division. The fish was 43 inches long and had a girth of 25 1/2 inches.

The snook was taken on 20-pound class tippet, and holds that record as well as the all-tippet record. It displaced a 27.5 pound fish taken at St. Lucie Inlet that same spring.

FLY TACKLE AND TACTICS

It's not likely that you'll get a 30-pounder on fly tackle, but snook readily take a variety of flyrod lures. While the record fish was taken on 8-weight tackle, many snook experts prefer 10 weight rods for mangrove country fishing because the added power gives some chance of stopping a fish from getting to the roots and cutting your leader. And, because the casts are often short and with little room for a backcast, overloading the rods with weight-forward 12-weight line is common. The heavier line makes it easier to flex the rod and make a good cast with a short length out the tip.