Chapter 3 "Stoney Heads for 'Hole Sweet Hole'"

Stoney is now on a slow crawl towards the “Hole Sweet Hole” to warn his buddy the Super Snook that he had to give away the location in order to live with his claws. Stoney is now on a southwest course and has been traveling non-stop for the past 12 hours in an attempt to head off the Super Snook to tell him he was compromised.

Stoney is not a very fast traveler and usually takes up to a week to finally find where the Super Snook is. They have been together since Super Snook was a fry in the estuaries of the Everglades where Super Snook and Stoney started as youngsters. He needs to find a faster way to the “Hole Sweet Hole’.

Lidia (the crab-fisherman’s wife) has now been to the beauty parlor in town and the location of Super Snook has taken on a life of its own. Seems just about everyone in town is talking about where Super Snook lives. It now seems like “Hole Sweet Hole” is on the lips of every fisherman in town and they are all headed to the Super Snook’s lair. Stoney told the crab fisherman the location of the “Hole Sweet Hole” by bridge, not by a specific piling, and where was the location of this piling? The Seven Mile Bridge life has over 550 pilings that could be the “Hole Sweet Hole” where Super Snook plans (or planned) on wintering. Ah, a life of easy currents and warm temperatures. A shaded piling to stay and then dash into the current for a tasty mackerel or a mullet, shrimp, pinfish or even tasty ballyhoo. The “Hole Sweet Hole” is a great place for the Super Snook to winter and he has settled in with a few choice lures that had straightened out hooks, several busted rods, a few pairs of glasses that anglers lost in their efforts to clean their glasses when they saw Super Snook launch out of the water with their lures in its maw. These were all mementos that were a part of the Feng Shui of the “Hole Sweet Hole”.

Meanwhile Stoney nears exhaustion as he has been traveling at a whopping 2 knots for the last 14 hours. He looks up on the surface of the water and notices an old bucket floating in the tide. With great effort he swims up to it and crawls in it exhausted. Now the tide will help him get to the “Hole Sweet Hole”. Water lapping at the buckets edge quickly lulls Stoney to sleep. The tide has turned and it headed in the general direction of Super Snook where Stoney plans to tell the great game fish that he has given away his secret location. I wonder what the Super Snook will do. Will Stoney get there in time to warn the Super Snook or will it be too late?