Weather and seas have cooperated nicely for doing some serious damage,(or is it the other way around…?) to spinner sharks. I’m not really sure how many have been hooked and fought over the past several weeks, but the box of 100 hooks I’ve been making the flies I use on them is just about empty. Two twelve weight rods broken, (most definately angler error, one of them was the new Nano-titanium the guys at Redington gave me, without a doubt, the most incredible casting rod I’ve ever touched, hearing it SNAP just about made me cry) the drag burned out of four reels, and about a half dozen lines lost. I’ve said it before, these sharks are the most out of control things I think you can get tangled up with. Also have had several slugfests with BIG jack crevalle. It’s that time of year and pods of the big guys are moving north along the beach.

My customer last friday landed three for a total weight of seventy pounds…two twenty pounders and one thirty. Thats alot of tugging on a half-day trip. A quick word about fighting big fish on a fly rod….a forty-five degree angle is the HIGHEST you should EVER have a rod on a big fish. Come up higher than that and you’re in the danger zone of breaking the rod. And that angle is subjective to where the fish is. If he’s on the surface, level with you, the rod shouldn’t come up past the ten o’clock position. If he’s down deep, straight below you, the eight o’clock position is the highest the rod comes up. You literally have the rod tip in the water just about all the time in that position. Hopefully this tip will help prevent rods,(yours and mine), from making that sickening sound we all hate…

Other stuff going on for the less masocistic are spanish mackerel and bluefish. They have been everywhere lately, great fun on six and eight weight rods. The big baracuda are still around, we hooked three yesterday that were three to four footers. The young lady along with her father was treated,(or maybe subjected) to her first fish she ever hooked on a fly being a VERY hot three footer that was a hundred yards away in a heartbeat. The strike was spectaculer, less than twenty feet from the boat, she muttering something about “….scared the crap out of me…” The dolphin lately have been pretty good, a sign of things to come I hope. Though we have them year round more or less, april, may and june are easily the best months for dolphin here.

The king mackerel still haven’t gotten any of my attention yet, but judging from how the commercial boats have been coming in and going right back out again, they must be pretty thick. I’ll get around to them in a couple of weeks when the sharks go away. And I know spring false albacore season is right around the corner, we boated a couple of the first ones last week. I better get these 12# rods and reels fixed before they show up in force….I’m going to need them. I’ll be at the Shallow Water Fishing Expo show in Ft. Lauderdale this weekend, stop by my booth and say hi.