Some of our winter residents have decided to arrive somewhat early. The past week has seen good action on jacks and some nice, big ladyfish. The change of pace is very welcomed, and though I love the albies, it gets to this time of year and I’m deffinately ready to catch other fish. The chum bait supply remains good, and chumming the flats where the ladies and jacks are hanging out gets them tearing around chasing everything that moves. And last friday, all the commotion attracted the attention of a few blacktip and spinner sharks. It’s not often I see these guys inside the intracoastal waterway, and I had not tried getting them to eat a fly before simply because their eyesight is pretty poor to begin with. With the water being tanic and brown, I didn’t have much hope of them being able to find a fly, even if it was a huge,bright orange thing. But, with them hanging around the boat chasing the hooked ladyfish around, it was worth a shot. My customer, Ken O’brien did very well hooking four and getting one shark to the boat that was about six feet and fifty pounds. Great fun in four feet of water. With most of the albies gone, the other stuff going on has been a very good wahoo bite going on outside of the reef. I haven’t made an attempt on them, I usually don’t ask my customers to try them since it is very much a luck thing getting one on fly. With so few numbers to work with, I think getting a wahoo on fly is about the toughest thing to do in florida. It usually involves deep drifting flies around floating debris and that takes some extreme patience. The reward is the incredible run these things make when hooked, there isn’t anything faster. If you just like watching line melt off the reel, these are the guys. Sixty-five mph is believed to be their top speed, and the few that I’ve hooked, I beleive it. One I timed dumped two hundred and fifty yards of line in about twelve seconds. If you make the mistake of touching the backing coming off the reel while the ‘hoo is making a fast run, you will bleed. The dacron backing will cut like a knife. I intend to work the wahoo over the next couple of weeks and will post the results.