The Ten Thousand Islands are loaded with places for snook to hide amid the mangroves. Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

Are there really 10,000 isles in the Ten Thousand Islands? As far as I know, no one has ever counted.

Frankly, it would take too much valuable fishing time to sit down with a chart or aerial photograph and try to count the number of mangrove islands that extend along Florida's southwest coastline for 20 miles from Marco Island to Chokoloskee.

What's important to know is that the Ten Thousand Islands is one great place to fish. If you've never been there, then you've missed an awe-inspiring angling experience.

In addition to the fishing action, the abundance of wildlife to observe leaves most first-time visitors torn between concentrating on their next cast and turning their heads to watch pink-feathered roseate spoonbills probing for food on a mud bar, staring at the manatee that just surfaced only a few feet from their boat, or searching for one of the many other species that call the Ten Thousand Islands home.

But once your attention drifts back to angling, this place will drive you crazy with the countless "snooky-looking" places to throw a bait.

Bring along some aspirin in case you get a headache from the constant twisting and turning of your head as you try to take it all in.

This is also a place where your sense of direction and location are easily disrupted. Everywhere you turn appears the just same as where you were looking last. The tannin-stained waters provide a vivid contrast to the evergreen leaves of red, black and white mangroves. Comparing the Ten Thousand Islands to a green and dark amber maze with the sky providing a blue backdrop gives you some idea of how it feels to be there.

The moment you slip on polarized sunglasses, the effect is only enhanced. The glare off the water's surface dissolves, and the green of the mangroves brightens, creating a three-dimensional feeling to your surroundings.

After a while in this environment, your mind grows numb to the background. You become keenly aware of anything different: from the snowy white feathers of a great egret perched in the mangroves to your guide jolting you out of your trance with the command, "Look to your right! Cast towards that overhanging branch."

And with that, you are back on track with your purpose of being in this wilderness -- to catch some fish.

SNOOK POPULATION
There's little doubt that the snook population in the Ten Thousand Islands is very healthy. But don't expect to catch a fish on every cast.

There may not be 10,000 islands, but in addition to hundreds of oyster bars, there's more than 1,000 miles of mangrove-fringed shoreline.

Those are the two most popular snook hangouts. That means the fish can be in many places.

Two other factors contribute to this part of the Florida peninsula being a hotspot for snook -- the remoteness of the Ten Thousand Islands and the regulations governing when anglers can legally keep a snook and the size of the fish they're allowed to harvest.

The area is a roadless estuarine wilderness so vast that seldom, if ever, will you feel like other anglers are crowding in on you. Access to 99.9 percent of this region is by boat. And because of the maze of waterways, anglers unfamiliar with the area will seldom venture far from the few marked channels. That leaves thousands of good fishing spots to the few who know the waters.