Hooked Up Designs Magazine September/October 2017 | Page 34

Left: Capt. Ed Zyak with
the giant, 30-inch seat-
rout he caught using a
DOA Snakoil while wad-
ing the lower Laguna
Madre near South Padre
Island, Texas.
Right: Capt. Brian Barrera with the huge 42-inch snook
he caught beneath the Ten Cent Bridge in Stuart, Florida
while fishing with Capt. Ed Zyak in June 2017.
Far Right: A school of snook, as seen by Capt. Ed Zyak’s
Humminbird Heliz mega 12 with side-scan sonar.
FLORIDA SNOOK
Beneath the legendary Ten Cent Bridge in Stuart Florida,
Captain Brian Barrera pitches his jig into the swift current be-
low. “Just twitch it up and down and let it sweep,” says Captain
Ed Zyak, while studying the side image of his Humminbird He-
lix where hundreds of pixelated snook appear on the bottom.
“Reel it up and cast again just past the piling and it should drift
right into them.”
This time after Barrera’s Baitbuster touches down his rod is
violently slammed, and the Texas native feels the raw power
of a giant bridge snook. Zyak quickly maneuvers the boat into
position, carefully avoiding the support columns while com-
pensating for the powerful tide of the St. Lucie River. The mam-
moth linesider turns and begins heading straight for the piling
just as he predicted, leaving Barrera to counter with his rod,
hoping to at least turn its head towards open water. After an
intense ten minute battle, they finally land the leviathan shore
side, where Barrera excitedly hops off the bow to hold his life-
long dream of a 40-inch snook. Forty-two, to be exact.
The smile on his face is one of relief and gratitude, as Zyak
makes good on his promise. “I told you we would eventually get
one if we worked at it long enough,” he said with a grin. “This is
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actually the fifth big one we caught this week,” replied Barrera,
while struggling to lift the massive fish for a photo. “But they
were nothing like this monster! It’s unbelievable, I owe you a
big Texas trout Ed!”
TEXAS TROUT
Two months later and over a thousand miles to the west,
Zyak and DOA Lures Founder Captain Mark Nichols are wad-
ing along the soft mud bottom of the Lower Laguna Madre near
the southern tip of the Texas/Mexico border. Back dropped
with prickly pears and yucca, the 130-mile estuary is one of
only four hypersaline ecosystems in the world. The dry, semi-
arid climate of south Texas, combined with only two inlets
maintains the bay’s salinity to that of slightly higher than sea-
water, and like Mark and Ed’s home waters of Stuart, the lower
Laguna produces some of the largest seatrout in the world. Not
to mention its Barrera’s home turf. And although he’s consid-
ered one of the Lone star’s top snook guide’s, the South Padre
native is well known for putting his clients on plenty of Texas
sized trout.
“See how the mullet are tracking up around that spoil is-
land?” he said, as Ed, Mark, and I hopped out of the boat to
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