This grouper beat the snapper to the bait.

You don't catch bait for the challenge. You climb mountains for that. Yet bait catching had become more challenging than it needed to be. Finding pinfish wasn't our problem. They were simply being outhustled to our shrimp-sweetened hair hooks by ravenous, 6- to 9-inch mangrove snappers that bore those bold, black feeding bars over their eyes. Those eyebrows would've made Groucho Marx proud.

Between the snapperettes, we finally managed to stash three dozen pinnies in the cooler. While Paul Soul‚ and Richard Kernish rigged rods for snapper, I launched a pinfish steak from the stern to see if any decent mangos were at home.

Immediately, my rodtip bounced, telegraphing a steady tap-tap-tap. But I fought the urge to strike back. This is one case where you don't set the hook right away. Between taps--nibbles when I was a kid--my bait and sinker rode right through the grassy carpet as we drifted. Right where they needed to be.

Then the nibbles ceased.

Chances were the runts made off with the goods.

Hopefully, they were run off by that notorious neighborhood bully, Mango Substantio. So I waited. Watched my rodtip intently. And nearly had my rod wrenched from my grasp. I shoved the rod skyward and reeled.

Ya gotta get the upper hand from the get-go before a snapper finds the forest.

I finally muscled the fish out of the grass and judging from the arc in my stiff 10-pound spinning rod, it was destined for the ice. I swung the 15-incher into the cooler. "Hope they're all like this or better, guys," I said. Most likely, they wouldn't all be. For every chunker in the 16- to 20-inch-plus range you land, you'll catch a dozen 12- to 15-inchers, a bunch just over the legal mark (10 inches), and as many that don't measure up.

But by inshore standards, that's far from shabby.

We each fished a bait briefly, but were overrun by shorties, so we motored south to where Capt. David Lee, Homestead resident and veteran guide out of Flamingo, had shut down to fish. Florida Bay was so flat that his Carolina Skiff, Fish Buster floated in midair, as did Long Key and Marathon a few miles to the south. They were lone references to an otherwise imperceptible horizon. Lee, anchored up and chumming, motioned to us to idle over.

"Havin' a devil of a time catching pinfish--too many little snappers," he shouted. "Water's awfully clear too, so I figured we'd chum 'em from the start rather than drift fish. Nailed a few keepers already, but we're about out of baits."

We had enough baits to go around, so Lee invited us to raft up and fish his chumline. As we did, his anglers, Dave Raska and Gordon Stoffer, advised us to wing our baits at least 50 feet behind the stern where the biggest snappers had gathered. Kernish broke out one of his home-brewed, high-octane, rolled oats-and-menhaden oil chum blocks left over from mackerel season. Within minutes, our two-barrel chumline was crankin'. And things got real busy.

Beneath the throng of little mangos at the stern, we spotted a few keepers shouldering their way in but it was tough to get baits to them through the gauntlet. Then Raska's rod lurched and he reared back.

"Here we go!" he said. "Me too!" Stoffer echoed as he buried his hook. "But this feels heavy for a mango," he added. Paul Soul‚ raised his plug rod sharply, but missed the hookset.

"Give 'em time, Paul," Lee advised. "Let the little ones peck it to death till a good one bulldogs 'em away."

"Ignore the taps," said Kernish, "and wait for the thunk."

That's the technique in a nutshell. You couldn't sum it up any better.

Raska's snapper was a 17-incher, a nice fat Florida Bay snapper, but Stoffer's fish turned out to be a legal gag grouper just over 23 inches. Not that anyone was complaining.

"Got a mixed crowd, boys!" Lee announced. "Looks like I better get busy and do the Captain thing," he laughed, and began cranking out pinfish steaks at sushi chef pace. A couple of Spanish mackerel streaked through, making off with both steaks and steel, and small sharks arrived and parked.

We were all catching snapper, but Raska and Stoffer were on an absolute roll, outfishing us three to one. And catching the biggest ones to boot, fishing the same chumline, just an elbow rub away.

This didn't sit well with Kernish. "How heavy a mono leader you guys using?" he asked, sounding just a little bugged.

"Thirty- and 40-pound, but it's fluorocarbon," said Lee. "Just might be makin' a difference fishing in this gin." Just might? Looked like it just plain was.

"Got a couple spools in my bag, Richard. Didn't dawn on me that it would be necessary fishing with bait," I said. He quickly swapped his 20-pound mono leader for a piece of fluorocarbon and caught a good one right away. Then another keeper. Pretty convincing stuff. I was retied and back fishing in record time.

By the time the bite slowed as the tide bottomed out, Raska and Stoffer limited on snapper, had three or four nice grouper between them, and we were finally bringing up the rear. Lee and his party took off to fish Shark River and we ran north and chummed in slightly deeper water as the tide started in. We filled our snapper limit, caught three more red grouper, a couple trout, a small cobia and a few too many sharks. A pretty productive morning. All within sight of the Overseas Highway.