My Heaviest Snook To Date!

My heaviest Snook to date:

This thing is built different… My previous heaviest Snook was 38 pounds and 1/2 an inch longer. On the lightest rod I have, a Nomad Inshore 10-20 spin rod, 10 pound braid, 25 pound leader and the Vertrex Max 75 in the colour Croaker. This fish looked like a 🏈, it doesn’t even look 45”es long because of how wide it is. I had a short time between an afternoon charter and a night charter so I went for a quick recon fish. On my second cast I got a big thump but didn’t come tight. I vibed the Vertrex Vibe twice more and this time came tight on the second thump. The fish was super heavy so I knew it was decent but on light tackle it can be hard to tell how big. She swam straight through some structure and took 200 yards of line through something. With zero drag I still thought the fight was about to end. I always carry a hound dog lure retriever on 200 pound mono. I unspooled the heavy weight and threw it down one side of the line hoping to catch the line coming out the other side but found nothing. I threw it out the other side and felt the line, some how it barely had the line and I was able to reach out and grab the light line. The fish was taking a massive run and I had to tie both sides back together. The knot was not pretty and after I cut the piece that was going through the structure I wasn’t even sure the knot could go through the guides and on the spool. The fish was running so fast that perfection was not an option. By this time the fish had taken a few hundred yards of line out and through a dock. I was able to pass it around some posts. But the fish had swam up in the shallows and back through the dock and out the other side. The property owners son came out and I was able to pass my rod underneath and he took it out the other side. I drove my skiff around and met him on the end of his dock and the fish had swam out deep. After a couple more minutes I was able to net the fish. She was exhausted by this time so I had to act fast for a healthy release.