Yes, it was. Madness that is. The sharks put up one of their best, non-stop, no days in a pissy mood shows I can remember. Consistent cooperation for almost ten weeks. Action fast enough for me to have no hope of keeping up with numbers. I’d hazard a guess we released about three hundred. and went through about four hundred flies, two hundred yards of leader material and several hundred feet of wire leaders. I must be doing something right because my guys only broke one rod,(not counting the one I blew up earlier in the season, log entry 1/13/06) and that story is worth telling.
A customer who had just a week earlier had been out for the sharks was out with me for a second go around. First shark of the day flies up to the boat, pounces on the fly and goes off on it’s initial run. I say to the gentleman,(we’ll call him Frank), “OK, jab him a couple times to set the hook” and Frank loses his mind and rears back on the rod like he’s winding up to hit a ball over Yankee stadiums center field wall. Not a nice thing to do to a rod. It breaks with a  sound like a pistol shot inside the fighting grip of his twelve weight, and there goes the entire top section of the rod over the side and down the line. When this all started I had just finished stringing up my fifteen weight, so while I drive the boat following the line waiting for the water pressure to push the broken rod back up where we can grab it, I pull all the line on the fifteen up and out the rod tip until I have about ten feet of backing out. Just about the time Frank is able to save the broken rod, I cut the fly line off the fifteen and switch places with Frank, having him drive. And just through the luck of creating enough slack to the shark so it doesn’t feel any pressure and go off on another run, I cut the line going to what is left of Franks rod, and retie his backing to the backing on the fifteen weight. And we finish the fight and land the shark. I had done the retie thing on big jacks and albies, never before with a shark. It was a pretty wild couple of minutes.
Anyhow, the sharks all left the premises on April 8 this year, sad to see them go, see-you all in nine months. And on April 13, we caught our first albie of the 2006 season. So, out of the frying pan, into the fire. As of this writing, we’ve already landed about seventy five albies, in ten days, fairly slow for albie fishing by our standards, but since they don’t usually even show up for another month, this is looking like another banner year to come on them. Dolphin fishing has been good, monster jacks and big king mackerel are rounding out the show.
Man, I love fishing Palm Beach.