Lol, I didn't realize or notice where you were going fishing. My mind automatically defaults to thoughts of Florida. Not the Upper Atlantic Coast.
Yeah, I was about to point out that you don't find snook past South Carolina. They are
extremely low temperature sensitive. Under 60 degree water, and they die en masse.
As for stories, I was once wade fishing a really great spot on the Florida west coast, around Venice. It was on the ICW, under a bridge that they cut the navigable channel out of the underlying limestone, and you could wade out to the edge of the channel. It was a really crisp edge, on the shallow side it was ~3ft or so... the drop went straight down to 25 ft. So literally you went, in one step, off a cliff. There was the usual florida bridge setup, with a high intensity spot on the channel depth indicator on the side of the bridge...and those who fish for snook know they sit under these, waiting for shrimp and baitfish to silhouette. This bridge is particularly good at holding very large fish....with the depth and structure there.
So I wade out one evening, and tip toe to the edge, on an incoming tide. I started out catching a real nice snook around 30" in the first half hour, on a DOA shrimp, probably the best snook lure there is, IMO. As it got darker and the tide pushed in, I really start ripping into the fish. Snook, Sheepshead, Permit, and even a couple of Jacks. It seemed like every third cast I was tied onto something.
There was hardly any light when I get tied onto something big, after a cast to the very edge of the spotlit area. The fish runs inshore along the shallows, and I'm fighting with my back to the channel....I get the fish to roll, on the surface about 20 feet from me, when it sounds like a shotgun goes off directly behind me, at my waist. I jumped around to see a high arched back and tall dorsal fin in the fading light, less than a foot from my hip. About the same time I realize in my head that it was only a very curious Bottlenose Dolphin that came up for a breath next to me on deep side of the drop off, was the same time my foot went off the side of said drop off, and backwards I fell into the channel. Huge splash as dolphin and I bump, and he freaks out about half as badly as I was.
Needless to say, I lost my whole rig, and the fish that was on in the ensuing chaos that followed. It's funny, but it could have gone a bad way if I had tried to hold onto my fishing equipment. Even wearing the small PFD that I was, didn't help much with the chest waders filling.
The dolphin circled back three times when I got to shore. Probably trying to figure out wtf had just happened.
