Whether using fly or spinning gear, the key is targeting the troughs along the mangrove islands. Photo by Polly Dean

Brrrrrrup! Brrrrup! Mike Livera worked a Devil's Horse plug along a mangrove shoreline, its propellers throwing spray noisily. Suddenly the rhythmic whirring sound stopped with a distinctive POP!

Then Livera's line came tight, and 10 pounds of muscled missile erupted from the water.

Snook offer anglers one of Florida's most exciting and intriguing inshore targets. And one of the best places in the state to encounter them is near Flamingo in Everglades National Park.

The park covers nearly two million acres, and a third of that is water, so plenty of habitat is available for linesiders of all sizes. While motor skiffs designed for shallow-water use are probably the most popular choice of vessels by fishermen searching for snook here, canoes and kayaks definitely have a place in the scheme of things, too.

If you have a sense of adventure, you can paddle into the no-motors-allowed areas to the west of Flamingo. Or if that's not adventurous enough, you can take an extensive canoe camping trip into the Everglades backcountry, camping on deserted beaches or in chickees like the Seminoles used, fishing your way along whatever route you choose to take.

Bob Stearns lives in Miami. When he's not flying around the world on magazine assignments, he fishes out of Flamingo several times a week. He shared with me some of what he's learned in 25-plus years of fishing for snook in the park's waters.

"March can be a tough month for snook," he cautioned. "During the winter, depending on the weather, they're usually somewhere up into the backcountry. During the summer, they're usually out along the outside shorelines. March is one of those transition months when they're moving from one area to the other, so they can be just about anywhere.

"They do like mangrove shorelines when the water is clean, and they prefer those shorelines on higher stages of the tide," Stearns pointed out. "You have to understand that working a mangrove shoreline, especially this time of year, is simply a matter of patience. Use a push pole or an electric motor to work your way down the shoreline, trying to cover distance.

"If you do this, you'll hit a fish here and a fish there, but you're going to work for them. Only rarely will you find them concentrated then."

This angler does have some other tricks and locations up his sleeve as well.

"Another good place to look for snook during March is around the mangrove islands in Florida Bay," Stearns explained. "Most of these islands are in the middle of shallow flats, but they have deeper moats surrounding them, where the water can be as much as 8 feet deep. These moats hold fish and can be fished the same way as any other mangrove shoreline.

"Sometimes you'll find surprisingly dense concentrations of fish in these places. You have to pay your dues if you do this, though -- visiting one island after another, looking for the one that holds fish, because they definitely will not all hold fish. (Cont.)