You can catch sand fleas on cape beaches with a special rake or long-handled net.

They glide across the shallows like ghostly shadows, singly, in twos, threes, sometimes a half dozen or more. Swimming close in along the beach, they follow a straight course, westward with the longshore current. This day, with a light east wind riffling the Gulf, they are more confident, less spooky than usual, moving at walking speed up the shoreline. Occasionally, just occasionally, one strays from the course to chase a baitfish or inspect a movement on the bottom.

The next group, four fish moving in a lopsided diamond, is already in sight. Facing east I make two false casts, shoot the line and drop the Deceiver two feet in front of the lead fish. I strip once, twice, it surges forward, grabs the fly and, when I set the hook, takes off back down the shore in a rush. When I raise the rodtip it leaps clear of the water, shaking its head and tailwalking for a second before falling back. It is early May and the surf snook of Sanibel Island have finally arrived. From now to mid-October they will prowl the white sand-and-shell shoreline.mild, it may be in April. One particularly warm year, I recall good fishing by mid-March. But usually, things crank up in early May.

The timing of the snook run depends on a combination of factors that trigger the fish's migratory and spawning urges. One, the earth's ever-constant solar orbit, is predictable. Other variables-the number of winter storms, the presence of baitfish and, most critical, the water temperature-vary from year to year.

Hunting the mangroves for snook is a time-honored pastime in many places in South Florida, including the backside of Sanibel. Generally this means fishing from a boat and blind casting to likely lies, though sometimes it is possible to spot feeding fish. But the snook fishing that really gets my heart racing is sight fishing along the beaches with a fly rod. Surprisingly, despite its rewards, on Sanibel surf fly fishing is still comparatively undiscovered. For those who have found it out, it can become a passion.

Avid fly fisherman and longtime Sanibel resident Paul Ravenna is one of the passionate. One morning last summer we met on bikes coming back from the beach. The water had finally cleared and the sheer numbers of fish cruising the shoreline was enough to give even the most aloof angler snook fever. Paul and I were both infected. We paused to compare symptoms and remedies.

"I had one yesterday that jumped five times," I said. 

"I like it better than bonefishing," Paul countered. "It's as much fun as anything I've had at Grand Cayman or Key West." He went on to tell about several fantastic days the previous year when he saw "thousands of snook coming up the beach."

I first came to Sanibel for health reasons, knowing little about the island but its latitude: south of the frostline. But after a few months, when I began to return to the land of the living, I discovered that misfortune had serendipitously landed me in a fly fisherman's Shangri-la.

Sanibel has long been known for its snook fishing. Faded sepia photographs show anglers posing with rows and rows of what, in any day, would be trophy fish. And old-timers tell tales-perhaps apocryphal-of snook so thick off the beaches that farmers seined them for fertilizer. Eventually the species was decimated. In the 1960's the novelist Peter Matthiessen, a part-time Sanibeler, published a short story titled "On the River Styx" about a fisherman in pursuit of the extremely rare snook, whose scarcity gave them near-mythical status. But these days a longstanding prohibition on commercial fishing combined with strict limits and closed seasons during the summer spawn and the coldest winter months assure that this superb gamefish will be around for future generations. For many of us, these are the good old days.

According to Dave Westra, owner of the region's premier fly shop, Lehr's Economy Tackle in North Fort Myers, "During the past couple of years, two years anyway, our beach fishing has been as good as it's ever been." Westra, who has been fly fishing for snook on Sanibel's beaches for more than 25 years, credits tighter regulations instituted over the last two decades, as well as the net ban passed by Florida residents seven years ago. "Right after that I'd have to say there was a marked increase in the number and the size of fish," he says.

My first snook hit a chartreuse-and-white Clouser Minnow one morning in May 1995. I got down to the beach about 9:30 a.m. The tide was coming in, creating a slight current from east to west (left to right) along the beach. A light northwest breeze was blowing offshore, leaving the water as calm and clear as an aquarium. Most of the snook were moving with the tide.

Under these conditions the sight fishing is excellent but the catching can be problematic; snook are extremely wary and have excellent vision. I could spot the fish coming a long way off and stayed back up the slope of the beach out of their line of vision as I false cast, trying to put the Clouser Minnow a couple of feet in front of them. I made lousy casts to the first few fish, then finally made a good one, hooked and lost an 18-incher that threw the fly back at me. Then I cast to one close in. It socked the Clouser, and I knew it was hooked solid. That 22-incher jumped four times before I landed it. Since then I have been as hooked as that first snook.

Sanibel's white, shelly Gulf beaches are among Florida's loveliest and all are public, though parking access is limited. The island is renowned as one of the world's top shelling spots and many a time I have been distracted from fishing to stoop and pick up a banded tulip or an apple murex washing in the surf. The Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum, located near the middle of the island, is the only museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to mollusks.

Most of the island's beaches slope up to barrier dunes grown over with spartina and sea oats, sometimes railroad vines, prickly pear and Spanish bayonet. Then comes a second ridge, higher and grown over with thick vegetation and trees, including wild coffee, gumbo limbo, cabbage palms, strangler fig, giant sea grapes and the tall, feathery-tipped Australian pines (not true pines but actually casuarinas).