Snook Grande on A Gummy Minnow

Date Added: January 31, 2009 08:48:49 PM

The Mexican guide Gabriel whispered into my ear as if we were spectators at a golf tournament. "Ees a Snook...Grande!! Do you haf de Goomee Meeno?" he said, in broken English. I nodded in affirmation and pointed backwards to the starboard side of the panga. There a neatly stacked quiver of flyrods laid waiting, mute, slender rapiers patient for a chance to strain and arc in battle. Gabriel melted silently off the casting deck to the middle of the panga. His assistant and "guide-in-training" who was firmly anchored on the poling platform like a statue watched curiously. Gabriel returned grinning cat-like with a rigid eight weight. Our eyes were now dilated, celestial black holes absorbing all ambient light under the mangroves. The snook, a steel gray shadow above the pock-marked mud hovered forward no faster than the movement of tectonic plates. We calculated the point of ambush. We waited. The natural pocket under the tangle of mangroves, our point of interception, would be no larger than a storm drain on a suburban cul-de-sac. The clouds, giant cotton balls of vapor, stopped moving. Our bodies petrified with anticipation. Time was defined by the sound of each decaying mangrove leaf spiraling into the tannic water below. I could almost hear my four day old beard growing. I rechecked the point of the hook on my Gummy Minnow, an already deadly pattern on numerous fresh and salt water species. Suddenly, with an innate flee response, Needlefish angled away from the dark shape approaching the opening into which I hoped to cast the imposter fly. The back-cast was short, quick and oddly defined. The forward cast sufficient though, for the fly line, leader and silverly fly miraculously unfurled and skipped with spastic energy under the web of knuckled limbs. The fish gods must have been smiling. The Gummy Minnow pulsated only once through the warm water with a crippled motion, accentuated by swift strips of fly line. The violent inhalation of the Gummy Minnow by this fish with a dramatic underbite was primal. After several minutes of tense, adrenaline pumped reeling and rod play, the snook was subdued. I turned to Gabriel and said, "Did you see that!" adding after some nervous laughter, "He was on that fly faster than Oprah on a baked ham!" Gabriel didn't understand. The Gummy Minnow has become one of my most favorite "GO TO" flies. Wherever one finds himself in the world, either in fresh or salt water, if there is a fish that eats other fish, the Gummy is an excellent, strike-inducing and durable pattern. It has personally accounted for dozens of species of fish from Coast to Coast and Continent to Continent. So the next time you planning an excursion where carnivorous fish can be found or spending an afternoon in your own backyard, invest in some insurance, cheap insurance. Load up your box with this elegant, realistic and proven fly pattern.

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