The butt of the rod pointed to the sky, yet the tip led into the Atlantic, and Paul Curtis knew he'd hung a big snapper. Palming the light spinning reel with his winding hand, he carefully played it, testing the limits of the light line.

"He's a good one, but I'm not sure I'll stop him," he said. "If I can keep his head out of the rocks for a few seconds, I might be able to gain some." As he spoke, he was losing a foot every two seconds.

As he predicted, the snapper reached the reef and wrapped the leader around the structure. Curtis held tight, hoping the reef was smooth where the line touched, and the fish would come out.

"If you keep the rod bent and twang the line like a guitar string, that'll sometimes help."

At that point, I figured that snapper had the 10-foot leader wrapped around several rocks, and Curtis could strum a concerto without so much as a prayer of that fish coming out. Several minutes went by, and I suggested a respectable retreat in the form of a break-off, when for some odd reason, the rod bent over again, and the fight began anew.

This time, Curtis had the upper hand almost immediately, and pumped line onto the reel in short bursts that had the fish halfway to the boat before it could gain a second wind. In less than a minute, the pink hue of a mutton snapper grew from a faint blur to a 10-pound outline.

"Just like I told you Mike, there's some nice snapper on these rocks," snipped Curtis, with a slight snarl of sarcasm. "You don't have to go out to 100 feet of water to catch these fish. You just have to know where the reef is, and when the fish come in to feed."

It was the middle of September when Curtis and I made that fateful trip to the patchy reef line in 25 feet of water south of Fort Pierce Inlet. A strong swell the previous week had pushed the snapper in close to shore, where they were feeding on the first schools of fall-run mullet pushing along the beach. Since that outing, I've made several memorable excursions to the shallow patch reefs, and every trip has left some remarkable memory etched in the back of my fishing log.

Bottom fishing is a lot like shooting craps--you try to pick a hot table and roll the dice hoping for a positive outcome, never sure what will turn up. In the game of bottom fishing, any reef is a potential winner, but a lot of sure bets turn out to be losing rolls.

Capt. David King is the bottom fishing guru of the Fort Pierce area, spending more than 200 days on the water every year. King runs his charterboat Little Adam out of the inlet whenever the seas are calm enough to sink an anchor in the sand, and many of his best trips are to the shallow reefs in less than 65 feet of water.

"We've got more reefs from Stuart to Vero Beach than anywhere else in the country," said King, who pointed out reeflines that run parallel to shore in 8, 12, 35, 45, 55, 65, 75 and 85 feet of water.

"Some are lines of reef, some is broken rock or small reefs, and some are just patches. Whichever depth you fish, you hit one rock, and you'll usually find more by running north or south in the same depth."

One of the most popular reefs out of Fort Pierce Inlet runs straight north from the tip of the inlet's north jetty, roughly a quarter mile off the beach. The reef starts in 12 feet of water, and gradually drops off to about 20 feet, where everything from margate and large sheepshead, to lane, mutton and mangrove snapper roam.

Most anglers fishing the reefline north of Fort Pierce prefer to fish live shrimp, which will draw the attention of all the snapper species, along with snook and doormat-sized flounder. Medium-sized shrimp are the key to a solid hookup. That's because a snapper will bite a large shrimp in half and miss the hook, and the profile of a small shrimp may go unseen by the reef dwellers. A good starting point is the line of reef directly off the North Beach condo in roughly 22 feet of water. During the summer the dark reeflines can easily be spotted in the clear, green water.

"On the slow days or when the tides are running too hard, I like to go to the 55-foot reef because there's a lot of bait that congregates in that depth," notes King, who prefers to fish the reefs in 75 to 150 feet of water.