September? No way!! Holy crap!! Where did this summer go?!? Oh, yeah, I remember now. It went blazing by with an estimated 4500 albie releases. It got to the point I was soaking my hands in ice water every night, due to the line cuts and sores from grabbing too many fish. Twelve broken rods, nine lines lost and over a thousand flies tied by yours truly. Some of the best midsummer dolphin fishing in the past several summers with a lot of big dolphin around early and then late in the summer. We boated one just this past week that was close to thirty lbs. This bodes well for the fall fishing as it is generally a more typical time for dolphin to come through. Kingfish, assorted runners,(probably another 2500 blue, bar and rainbow runner releases) providing light tackle options when needing a break from the ablie onslaught. Blackfin tuna were a little scarce, and the few big ones we did manage to hook were all blasted by bull sharks. Oh, yeah, the bull sharks were relentless in June, packs of them coming to the boat before we even started chumming. I need to figure out a way to dissuade them from bothering me next year. We had great weather over all, didn’t cancel a single trip and only had a couple days inside the ICW due to rough water on the ocean. Snook were good in August, tarpon are just getting back into the area on their southward migration. The normal tarpon fishing in June and early July was lackluster with bad water quality for sight casting and fewer than normal tarpon from what everyone was saying. There are some very good guides in the area that spend considerably more time on the silver kings than I do and when hearing how tough it was to get results, I opted for more reliable results with the reef chumming. There quite a few memorable events, an enormous cobia lost after an epic hour long fight, a weeks time where from horizon to horizon albies crashing flying fish, a seventy fish day on albies in only thirty feet of water, a six foot long barracuda ripping an albie out of my hands just as I was picking it up out of the water,(that one was a little scary, the cuda was going about fifty when he hit)) just too many stories to relate. And this brings me back to the start of the fall bait migration/mullet run kicking off. The first schools of mullet, ladyfish, bluefish and jacks showed up this week, crashing in schools of bait so large as to be mind boggling. I threw the net on just such a school pilchards and sardines last week, and the net could not close, over a thousand pounds of bait in one shot. I hope the hurricane season finishes without us wearing one, I’m looking forward to a fall season of inshore and offshore fun with snook, tarpon, jacks, dolphin, skipjack tuna and what ever else we find. Spinner sharks should be along shortly.