Tarpon snook seldom reach the minumum "keeper" size for Flordia snooks: 26 inches.

We launched our 14-foot skiff just before daylight. The river was calm and it wasn’t long before we had our final destination in sight. I hit the kill switch and made our small outboard sputter for its last breath. The electric motor was all I needed to finish the rest of this trip.

My son was already standing on the front deck waiting patiently for us to draw close enough for a cast. I saw him flip the bail and make a perfect sidearm shot, skipping his soft-plastic bait up under the end of the dock. Seconds passed.

“Got one!”

The fish hit the surface and rolled in the dock light, flashing its black lateral line: a snook. But today we weren’t looking for just any snook, we were looking for the elusive tarpon snook, a little-known species in the Centropomus family. The fish lost the battle with my son. Inside the boat, we confirmed that it was, in fact, a tarpon snook. Tremendous luck for a first cast.

We quickly released the fish and a couple casts later hooked another tarpon snook. We fished our docks for a couple hours until daylight had taken over the night sky. We caught six tarpon snook and two of the familiar common snook.

By now it was late enough to make a call on my cell phone to a biologist friend who I’ve been working with for three years. I called Jynessa Gianelli, a Florida Institute of Technology doctoral candidate, and caught her at the Smithsonian Marine Station in Fort Pierce. She was waiting for my call because she was planning to join me the next day. I couldn’t wait to let her know the bite was on.

“Better bring lots of spaghetti tags because you’re going to need them,” I said.

This one's a fat snook--and a large one at that.

The next morning Jynessa made the trip to Stuart and we launched our small boat and headed for the docks. Once again, my son hooked up on the very first cast. Another tarpon snook. Jynessa quickly went into action and began measuring and tagging the fish. Before she had the first one tagged, I had our second specimen swimming in the livewell.

Soon, Jynessa looked at me and said, “I’m out of tags.”

“How many did you bring?” I asked.

“Ten.”

I looked in the livewell and there was still a tarpon snook in it.

“I need one to take back to the lab and do some tests,” Jynessa said.

Number 11 was not as lucky as the first 10.

The sun was getting high and the bite was over at the docks so we headed for the mangroves in search of another snook species. Jynessa picked up a fishing rod, cast at one of our favorite tree limbs and hooked up. When she flipped her fish over the gunnel, the two of us looked at each other in disbelief. It was a swordspine snook, rarest of all the snook species in Florida. As a scientist, Jynessa was in seventh heaven and I, being a photographer, quickly realized the photographic potential on hand. We already had a tarpon snook in the livewell and now we had a swordspine. It was no great feat to add a common and fat snook. We finished the day catching and documenting all four species, a feat I had never done before.

Jynessa and I have a special permit from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allowing us to catch and keep any snook species for scientific study. Although there has been a lot of scientific information collected about common snook over the years, there has never been any significant study of our other three snook species. Little is known of their feeding habits, spawning habits and life histories.

The next phase of our studies will involve tagging snook with radio receivers and tracking them as they migrate up and down the rivers. Common snook move to inlets and into the ocean each summer to spawn. Nobody really knows if tarpon, fat and swordspine snook do this also, but we aim to find out with our tags.