Summer is winding down finally, and what a great summer of fishing it was. Albies put on a beautiful show, and here it is the
beginning of September. and they are still in the area! For most of the season, the average size was big, twelve to fourteen pounds
and not much at all in the way of smaller fish. And world record class sixteen to eighteen pound fish being landed every day.

Then about the beginning of July, the smaller six to ten pound fish flooded intothe area. I did not keep an accurate count of
albie releases this summer like I usually do, but somewhere north of three thousand sounds about right.
We had encounters with blackfin tuna of all sizes throughout this period, and while we did boat quite a few of the
smaller five to eight pound fish, the twenty five to thirty pound + blackfins stayed elusive.  
July also had alot of sailfish in the area. In the process of trying to get one of the big blackfins in the icebox for dinner, I released three sails solo one afternoon.

I should have spent more time dragging teasers for them with clients, I’m sure it would have been worth it.
Since the beginning of August, the king mackerel have been spectacular and as good as I’ve ever seen them. Chumming them
right to the suface, kings in the ten to twenty five pound range lauching out of the water like silver missles. Some of these fish
were reaching twenty feet in the air. In the middle of one melee’, I heard a thump and a slash that I couldn’t really identify. After
looking around to make sure that both my anglers were still holding their rods, and a quick inspection of the boat to see if
something important hadn’t gone swimming, I went back to work and forgot about the unidentified sound. Then,standing on the
front deck while hosing the boat off at the end of the day, I could see the long streak of kingfish slime and scales where one
of the high jumpers had come down on the t-top canvas before falling back in the water. Mystery solved.
In addition to the king mackerel fishing, snook in the inlets and around bait schools close to the beach have been very good.
Wreck and reef fishing with the sinking lines has also been darn entertaining with jack crevalle, amberjack, almaco jacks,
assorted snapper and a few grouper as well.

Dolphin fishing has been a disappointment this summer, I don’t think we’ve caught a keeper sized dolphin since early June.
But in the past week or so, a number of fish have been reported, so I’m hoping for a repeat of last fall when we just got tired of
catching them. The skip jack tuna should also be around for the fall.
The mullet run/fall bait migration is right around the corner, and all the madnees that involes. With mullet schools being
hammered by everything that swims from sharks and tarpon to jacks and bluefish. I’ve even seen sailfish in ten feet of water
chasing bait around on a regular  basis. We should get a little flurry of action with the spinner sharks too this fall if history repeats itself.