The Snook Wasn't Mad. He Was Bored.

The line on the shirt reads: he's not mad, he's not even thinking about you anymore.

That came from a Tuesday in May. Outgoing tide at the back of a residential canal off Madeira Beach. Three of us in a flats skiff, two flyrods, one spinning rod with a DOA shrimp. The water was glass. The mullet were nervous, which is usually a tell. We'd been watching one snook hold against a dock piling for about twenty minutes. Big fish. Maybe thirty-six inches. He was tucked into the shade where the piling met the seawall, and every two minutes he'd ease forward, eat something we couldn't see, and slide back into the dark.

The first cast landed three feet too long. He didn't move.

The second cast landed two feet short. He didn't move.

The third cast landed exactly where it should have, the shrimp drifted past his nose at a perfect angle, and he didn't move.

Somebody on the boat, and we will not name him because he asks us not to, said it under his breath.

"He's not mad. He's not even thinking about you anymore."

Everybody laughed. Nobody caught the fish. We watched him eat three more times and then drop off into deeper water when the tide turned. The line stuck. By the time we got back to the ramp, all three of us were repeating it to each other like a song that wouldn't leave.

That's the whole origin. No big drama. Just one cast that landed right and one snook that did not care.

The thing about snook is they're the most honest fish on the flats. Redfish will eat out of frustration. Trout will eat because they're built to. Tarpon eat for reasons we still don't fully understand. But a snook eats when a snook decides to eat, and the rest of the time he watches you do your work and says nothing. He's not insulted. He's just done with you. You're not part of his afternoon.

We sat on the line for a year before we put it on a shirt. The painterly version of him on the back of the tee is exactly how he looked that Tuesday. Half in shadow, half in light, eyes pointed at something we couldn't see. The shirt isn't about catching a snook. It's about not catching him and walking off the boat anyway.

The Smug Snook Tee is in the Lost Fish Stories collection. It's the second-most-returned-to design we make. The first one is the tarpon. Naturally.