It is not true that a snook hangs to the mangrove roots with his fins and reaches out for your streamer fly without letting go. And the snook is a pretty fish, I think, if you view from the side. From the front he has a delinquent look, reminding me a little of northern pike or barracuda.

From his bow he looks not at all like a shark but he exudes the same menace when he comes straight for the boat, and when water was clear I have twice seen beginning snook anglers yank plugs away from him and yell, "Damn shark!"

Since he is sometimes derricked from bridges and piers with wire lines and often is trolled up with tackle suitable for marlin, he is low on the social order. He has a name that won't roll in the mouth like "salmon," "trout," or "grayling." His Spanish handle, robalo, sounds better, but I've given up on getting anyone to use it.

Go after him with a fly rod and a big streamer or popping bug, up the mangrove creeks where the branches crowd in and the white ibis and anhingas flap off in indignation, and he is a special fish. He lives back where the mangrove roots reach for mud and water, forming a vegetative cave (decorated with captured lures, according to wry snook anglers). Back in the mangrove swamps, miles from open water, you work your skiff gently along the shore and cast against the roots and branches, sometimes a little apprehensive of the swirling turn and the quick slant for cover.

Jim Henely cast twice to the perfect snook pocket and when there was no response he sighed nervously, his lure safely retrieved, and composed a complicated sentence:

"You don't suppose he thinks I don't know he's back there, do you?"

A little later as the water boiled, the flimsy shoreline shook and his line snapped to festoon about Jim's shoulders, I voiced the advice I so wisely offer in such cases:

"Hold him out of the bushes!"

And Jim turned to glare at me.

"Don't just say things like that," he snapped. "Point at the bushes. Maybe that would help."

On open water the snook can be different, just another fish, and to me the snook is better when he lives against the roots and old logs in the backcountry, as he does in much of the tropical and subtropical mangrove belt that circles the world, in places of dark and moody waters where the edges give forth the strange sounds of unseen wildlife, where a touring raccoon stops to stare at your boat and then hand-over-hands along the roots again.

There are great anglers who say only the salmonoids are worthy of their casts. If they will be nice to me, I'll be nice to them.

There are still bald eagles in the mangrove swamps of the brackish Everglades, although not so many now. Twenty years ago it was common to see them high above timbered backwoods bays, riding the thermals or angrily robbing ospreys of choice mullet in plunging air-to-air attacks.

It's National Park water now where we used to hunt widgeon and pintails over a broad bay with a grassy bottom. Eagles live a long time and learn well. I remember one who sat half a mile away from our blind, a white dot on a big buttonwood, and came fast when he heard shooting to race us for a downed duck. He'd probably done it for years. Once, perhaps flustered by our competition, he carried a decoy and its anchor for 50 yards before dropping it in disgust.

There was once when big Ted Smallwood left our blind to race him for a pintail drake, making the little duckboat scoot with his pushpole. With Ted still 30 yards from the bird, the eagle swooped, apparently certain to win the race, but Ted fired his duck gun in the air and the raider veered off, then came in even lower. Ted fired two shots that time but the eagle towered only momentarily and wheeled back. Ted was reloading and I hoped he wouldn't get too sore.

"Don't shoot too close to him, Ted!" I yelled. "That's our national bird!"

"Yeah," grunted Ted, going back to the pole with a mighty shove, "and he's like the rest of the damned government. Wants everything I've got!"