Ahhhhh…..Spring fishing, some of my favorite action of the year. It’s a good thing the fishing gets good this time of year, because when the sharks leave, if I didn’t have something to keep my mind off it, I’d just go into a deep state of depression. And the sharks are gone, the bluefish went bye-bye, pompano have headed out, and spanish mackerel immigrated elsewhere. We had just great action on the sharks right up to April 15th. That’s the latest date I have ever seen them in the area, March 28th to April 2nd are more typical exit dates for the spinners. I did not keep as good a record on totals as I did last year,( See log entry 5/20/03) but the entertainment value was extreme. A rough estimate of numbers were probably around 350 hooked and about two hundred sharks landed and released. Not bad considering the havoc wrought by the damn gillnetters. The bluefish were one of those anytime, any day, any weather things we could do. An acre of the smaller ones in the two to five pound range were planted in the same spot for months, and towards the end of March some of their much larger brethren started mixing in. We landed several in the mid teens weight range, with eight to ten pounders common. But the variety pack has really ensued in the past couple of weeks, almost everyday has presented different species to throw at. Cobia over fifty lbs have been hooked, though the largest that has made it to the boat was in the thirty pound range. Dolphin have been slowly moving in and we had a double header on fish in the mid twenty pound range last week. One was boated easily and the other was one of those dolphin that just says “Screw you, I’m not coming in…” and didn’t. At the end of almost an hour fight, the leader parted and the fish won. Very epic battle. We have boated quite a few monster jacks in the past month, the biggest to date was just over forty lbs that my brother Dean boated. Albies have been showing up sporadically, looks like another early apearance for them. Though I haven’t personally seen them over eight pounds, we did have some good action on skipjack tuna this week, we boated several in the eight to ten pound range. A few blackfins have been reported also recently King mackerel are also into their spring run, some very nice fish from what I have heard. Twenty pounds seems to be the average and fish into the fifty pound range are being reported. Spring fishing is underway.