I will try to remember everything that has gone on in the past month or so, some of the entertainment has been right off the scale. We’ll start with Scott and Lanette Singletons trip back in the first week of May. A while back I know, but one thirty minute segment was about as nutty as it gets, left us all laughing until our sides hurt. The Singletons weather was marginal for the four days that we fished, with the seas being a sloppy three to four foot, but with little going on inshore, we buckled down and headed offshore anyhow. The first day was spent warming up on runners and other assorted little stuff, Scott managed a twelve pound dolphin on his eight weight the second day, but the third day was where things got crazy. I managed to get a few albies coming up on dead glass minnows, fish in the six to eight pound range. Both of the Singleton’s were holding their eight weights, and I figured the eights would be fine on that size albie. I gave Lanette the go ahead, she dropped a cast in and sure enough, a twelve pounder came in from nowhere and pounds her fly. Just as the albie goes off on it’s run, here come two dolphin in the twenty pound plus range. I told Scott to lose the eight and grab a big rod. Well, Scott just drops the eight on the deck, line still stripped off of it and gets his twelve weight. He makes a nice cast right in front of the larger dolphin, only to have another big albie pick the fly off right from under the chin of the dolphin. So, I grab the only other big rod, a ten weight, and get a hook into the big dolphin. I hand the dolphin rod over to Scott and take the albie on the twelve weight off his hands. Now, that albie has headed to the front of the boat, taking me with it. Scott has followed the dolphin to the back of the boat where Lanette is fighting her albie. The chum is all in the back of the boat where I can’t get to it, and the second dolphin is still swimming around the boat. I figure I better do something about this or he’ll be leaving, and looking down, there’s the eight weight laying on the deck ready to cast and in a fit of temporary insanity, I pick it up one handed and make a cast at the second dolphin. Sure enough, I get a hook stuck in the fish and it goes off on a running, leaping sprint. For those of you not keeping count, this is now four fly rods, four fish, and three sets of hands doing the work. Lord I wish I had someone there in another boat filming this circus. Anyhow, in an effort to keep up with the dolphin that is just putting on a spectacular jumping show, I put the twelve wieght in my mouth,(along with all the glass minnow scales I had covered it with). The albie on it, up until that point, was being somewhat passive. Of course, when I brought my teeth into play, it decides it’s time to do a scorching run well into the two hundred yard range. I’m doing my best to stay focused on the dolphin, but my teeth being pulled out of my head is making this difficult. Anyhow, my dolphin jumps off right about this time, and about twenty seconds later, something eats the albie, (shark), whole. We can now get back to the other end of the boat with the Singleton’s,(remeber the Singleton’s?). Scott has done a fine job of keeping his dolphin fairly close, and Lanette is just putting the finishing touches on her albie. We get the albie in the boat and released, and just as I turn my attention to Scott’s dolphin, well, here come’s another dolphin about the same size. Another round of frantic activity ensues as I try to chum this new player into the mood to eat a fly, but he’s having none of it. More than likely, it’s the dolphin I jumped off. Anyhow, I spend enough time messing with this fish before I give up on it, that when it comes time to land Scott’s dolphin, as I’m trying to lead it into a net, the hook basically falls out and he swims off. I straighten up and look at the other two and we all just burst into hysterical laughter. It would have been nice to get the dolphin, but that would have just been frosting on a very tasty cake. Then the weather took a serious turn for the worse, almost three weeks of the windiest weather south Florida has seen in May. Winds stayed above twenty knots with gusts over thirty, making seas well into the “fugly” range. Almost noone was able to make it offshore, and the few that did found marginal fishing for their troubles. But the weather improved drastically last week, and the albie fishing has built into series of all out battles everyday. We had one day last week when the albies moved much further inshore than is normal for them, only a couple hundred yards off the beach in water depths of twenty to thirty feet. The nice thing about hooking albies in water that shallow, when they go off on thier run, there’s nowhere to go but out. And out, and out. I must have made some kind of impression on the Singletons though,(I’m not sure what kind of impression I could have made other than being some kind of nut) because they extended an invitation to join them in the Bahamas for a few days. Julie, my wife, had never been to the islands. And since stage one of the permanent move to “The islands, mon..” , is getting her over there, I was able to employ some of my guide buddies to cover my trip for a few days and off we went. Treasure Cay is about one third of the way from the north tip of Abaco, one of the world’s great Edens. Turquoise water, really neat limestone formations carved by the surf, palm trees, sunsets that explode in the western sky. Just drop dead georgeous. Scott and I went with a guide named Pedro on day one, into a labyrinth of cays and islands with beautiful water to the north of Abaco. An area that looked like you could fish it everyday for a year and not fish the same water twice. Conditions were tough, windy and cloudy,(the same horrible weather back home was experiencing) I managed one bonefish, and a monster mutton snapper,(a much more notable catch in my opinion) for the day. As Pedro was tying up the boat at the end of the day however, he tweaked his back( a pain I’m more than familiar with) so needed the next day to recoup. The day after that, Scott opted for the golf course and a friend of his Bill, an attourney from D.C. and I headed back to the flats with Pedro. Bill had never fished salt, much less bones, and to say he was pumped would be an understatement. Conditons were a little better this day, more sunshine for better visability and a little less wind. This is where I join the “Stupid Peoples Club”. We get into a spot that is just loaded with bonefish, probably a hundred fish milling around in a space the size of a football field. We bailed out of the boat and go wading after the bonefish. Now we did notice several small sharks in the area, but I paid them no mind. While casting at a group of bones, I see a bone coming after my fly, there is a big swirl, I come tight and off goes a good run well into my backing. I try pulling my fish away from the school of bones in an attempt to keep from spooking them at Bill’s expence and succeed to some degree despite the fact I’m only using a eight weight rod with a ten pound tippet. Well, I get close enough to have the monster bonefish I’m so sure I’m attached to turn into a blacktip shark, just shy of three feet long, that is foul hooked in the tip of the pectoral fin. The only thing I can figure is the shark was after the bonefish I saw coming in on my fly, and was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up foul hooked. Well, I play the shark out till it’s exausted, just laying on the surface. Keep in mind I handle several hundred spinner sharks five times this thing’s size back home every winter. I see no reason I shouldn’t be able to get the hook out of the thing and send it on it’s way. With my long nosed locking forceps, I get a good hold on the bend of the tiny size six hook, and give a hard yank up and away from me. Now this tiny hook that I’m expecting to let go, straighten out or break does a fourth option that I didn’t expect….it holds. I now have snatched this shark completely up and out of the water, it’s at shoulder level and at arms length, and it shows me why I was needlessly worried about it’s well being. It comes around with speed you wouldn’t believe and makes absolute hamburger out of the index finger on my right hand. Luckily it didn’t get a good hold, as I’m sure it would have clamped and held if it could. From the moment I yanked on the hook, to the shark falling back in the water covered a total time of about half a second. I look at my hand and think “hmmmm, that’s not good….” I throw the rod, complete with shark at Pedro and head for the boat. Somehow Pedro releases the shark and meets me at the boat. Well, there’s no first aid kit, but I have one sheet of a paper towel. I wrap it around the finger and Pedro comes up with a t-shirt he cuts a strip off and we wrap that around the finger. You may be wondering where Bill is…he’s off chasing bonefish frantically, I think he’s assuming the trip is about to be cut dramatically shorter. Pedro sure is, saying…” We go to cleenic,Mon…we go Now, Mon…” “Screw it Pedro…I can still move it and there’s no arteries cut, keep on fishing with Bill…” Pedro looks at me like ” Freekin crazy american…” and trudges off after Bill figuring to have only one customer alive at the end of the day. Well, I sit there in the boat contemplating my finger’s plight, and the bleeding amazingly stops, and the cold water I’m pouring on it is making it pretty tolerable. I stand up and look to see that most of the bonefish have by-passed Bill and Pedro and have encircled the boat. Us Florida guides may not be bright individuals, but we’re tough SOB’s. A left handed casting we go and actually manage to hook one of the bonefish! This is where it becomes painfully obvious that two hands are really a requirement and not an option. After deciding that there’s really no way around it, I break the bone off and sit there disgusted with myself until Bill finally,(like an hour plus after I get tagged) gets his bonefish, I snap a couple shots of him and we haul butt back to the dock. This report has gotten quite long and my finger hurts so I’ll shorten the remainder considerably. Forty minute boat ride back to the dock, forty minute car ride back to the hotel, twenty minute visit to the islands medical clinic, just enough time to get back to the hotel, pack and get to the airport for our scheduled flight back to Florida. Through the ER doors at 7:30 PM and am finally seen and stitched up by a Dr. at midnight, twelve hours after the shark buried it’s teeth in my finger. And twenty one stitches is what is needed to piece it all back together again.

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.

Two months have pretty much just flown by here. Over all, the entertainment value has been good, weather has been pretty good and the people I’ve been fishing with first rate. Jacks, ladyfish, pompano, bluefish, ( some very large for us, up to ten lbs ) , spanish mackerel, ( some huge, we boated one that was 9.5lbs ), and some very good king mackerel fishing, ( including one I caught on a nine weight that went into the twenty pound range ). A veritable pot pourri of activities has kept us entertained though January and February. There were a couple of days I wish I had gone out for sailfish, the bite that went off was truly astounding. During the Silver Sailfish Derby that the West Palm Beach Fishing Club puts on every January was one of those bites. This years tourney shattered old records with numbers of sailfish being released that would rival anywhere in the world. First day of the tourney, sixty boats released somewhere around a hundred eighty sailfish. As if that was just a warm-up, day two totals were close to four hundred sailfish being released! And day three was another very good day with another almost two hundred sailfish releases. Those are the kind of numbers I wish I was on the spot for with a fly rod, but we were in on the beaches doing battle with the spinner sharks. The sharks that were here in the early part of the season were CK fish, “customer killers” . Huge sharks, the biggest I’ve ever seen grouped up in the area. We weren’t finding any under eighty pounds, and hundred pound sharks were the average size. Biggest boated/released was right around a hundred twenty pounds. These were really too big for fun, the fight would last an hour and leave you pretty much spent. I and most others prefer the fifty to seventy pounders that still put on an awesome fight, but quit before the coronary kicks in. January was a little disconcerting though as numbers of spinner sharks were way down from previous years. I wasn’t seeing the days with groups of hundreds of sharks moving through the area. And the mass “jumpoffs”, ( this is when dozens of sharks all start free jumping at once, a trait I believe to be mating behavior related ), were nonexistent. I was then informed to some rather disturbing news. As the sharks move into the area, they come in from deep water on a course that brings them into an area far enough from the shore that commercial gillnetters can legally target/net them. The numbers just make me sick. Two large gill net boats were intercepting the main groups of sharks and were taking four thousand pounds, per boat, per day. This went on for about forty-five days until the commercial quota was met and the season closed on the sharks. To save you the trouble of getting out the calculator, that adds up to three hundred and sixty-thousand pounds of sharks, almost ten-thousand individual fish.That is assuming that there was no over the limit harvesting going on. The source I have believes that as much as twenty-thousand pounds a day could have been getting netted on occasions that they believed the law enforcement wouldn’t catch them. And what is it all being used for? No one knows for certain, but the fins are probably going to the orient and the rest of the shark meat is going to cat food or fertilizer. I think I have as realistic an estimate of the population as anyone, and I think the total number of adult spinner sharks that move through here are around forty thousand. Since the sharks don’t reproduce fast, the number being harvested are scary. It won’t take much of this before they go away for good. Very sad state of affairs…I’ll keep you posted on what will now be my mission in life to get this incredible crap stopped. It was literally the day after the season closed that I saw my first big school of sharks move into the area, and since then it has almost been like normal. Numbers are still just a shadow of former years, but the action on them has been good. I hope to see them stay in the area until their normal exit date somewhere at the end of the month. As of this writing, all the previously mentioned fish species are still in the area and the only addition to the list of fish has been dolphin moving into the area in decent numbers. If we are lucky, it’ll repeat like last year when the sharks moved out and good schools of dolphin, king mackerel and skipjack tuna all moved in to replace them.

You have got to love a punctual fish. Just like clockwork, and just like the past five or six years that I’ve really been paying attention, the spinner sharks arrived in between Christmas and New Years. The first group of the “Brown Bombers” were spotted just up the coast only last Sunday, and two days later, many dark shapes were zipping out of the path of the boat as I ran down the beach. I could have just about done handsprings. However, a relentless procession watercraft of all makes and sizes, some I’m sure haven’t been wet in oh, say twelve months to the day, made the opening season action, well, not so good. The fact that the offshore action on sailfish, ( some of which in the recent couple of weeks had been spectacular ), dolphin and kings was just about nil, left many more anglers than usual working the inshore waters. We did manage one spinner to the boat on New Year’s Eve, and though we had several lookers today, none would commit to a dance. I’m sure that will change shortly. Other than that, the normal menu of bluefish, jacks, ladyfish, pompano and runners have been providing fairly reliable action. The original school of jacks that had moved into the inlet some weeks backs,( a mass I’d guess to be several thousand strong) must have gotten tired of the bull sharks, bottlenose porpoise, cudas, commercial fishermen and everyone else harassing them. They moved out to parts, ( somewhat ) , unknown. There will probably be a replacement school along shortly, hopefully fish too big for any of the aforementioned, ( except for masocistic fly anglers ), to mess with. So, now that everyone that is supposed to be here has arrived, let the beatings begin, (and not necessarily only that of fish). All that remains is some cooperative weather to let us get some damage done

Most of us are pretty tired of the wind that has spent quite a bit of time in Fl. recently. November was about as windy a month as I can remember here. Twenty to thirty knots most of the month, I think I made it out the inlet twice. It has abated already to some degree here in Demeber, with as many days of decent weather as not. As for the fishing, the inshore scene has taken center stage over the bluewater action, both due to the uncooperative weather and a lack of targets out deep. Jacks, bluefish, pompano have been in good supply if not good attitude. Lots of fish, but not crashing into the boat like we like to see them doing. A couple of spinner sharks have been encountered, though they’re not due for a few more weeks. Some of the ultralight stuff we’ve been doing has stepped “out of the box” if you will…small blackfin and skipjack tuna,(“pocketrockets”) in the two to four pound range were popping surface flies on four and five weight rods in two hundred plus feet of water. The little guys would dump quite a bit of backing for their size. We also had the chance to use the same rods on so-called baby AJ’s, (amberjack, arguably one of the toughest fighting of the jacks) in the four to eight pound range. They were in relatively shallow water for AJ’s, fifteen to twenty feet, but they would rocket to the surface after teaser plugs, and dropping a fly would bring great surface strikes. This is basically our winter menu, which should be the main entertainment for the next several months. Only thing missing are the sailfish and spinner sharks. Should be any day now.

No rest for the weary. The mullet run/bait migration went off in fine shape with lots of action on many different species of fish. Great action on massive ladyfish in along the beaches and some fine dolphin action out offshore during September and October. It is winding down now, but the winter species list is already knocking, or rather banging on the door. Here it is just November and the bluefish, spanish mackerel and jack crevalle action is typically what I usually find going on in January. The spanish mackerel blitz that went off last week outside of Palm Beach was one of the best I had ever seen anywhere. As many as you could stand and some very nice fish up into the five and six pound range. Bluefish and jacks mixed in, some of the jacks were in the “Don’t hook that thing!!!” range. We also had a special early season encounter with some spinner sharks the end of October. A buddy and I went one for five in about an hour one afternoon. I believe it was just some incidental sharks that were following the bait schools since I haven’t seen them again, but it was a nice warm up to the action due to start in the next month or so. A special treat last week was a veritable pot pourri of species offshore. Several days we had five species while working the blue water. Dolphin, skipjack and blackfin tuna, false albacore and rainbow runners. Though the blkfins were on the small side, a few of the skippies and the dolphin came home for dinner. Action on sailfish has been such that I think I may try dragging some teasers next chance I get, some of the bait boats have been getting a good number of shots each fishable day. The weather hasn’t been very cooperative in the past couple of weeks, a bit on the windy side. But thats ok, a bit of a blow usually keeps things stirred up and after it’s done the fishing undoubtably improves. And hopefully the wind will get it out of it’s system for the remainder of the winter.

Dolphin fishing has been good the past couple of weeks. Though nothing huge, decent numbers of four to ten pound fish with a few larger have been playing nice. They showed up just about the time the last remaining false albacore moved on to where ever it is they go. Got to watch the food chain at work while on a trip last thursday. A five pound dolphin tried to use the boat as cover from a maurading marlin of about four hunderd pounds. The marlin was taking laps around the boat at warp speed while the dolphin coward under us. Very cool to see. The king mackerel, though reduced in numbers, are still in the area. Some of the kings are of very nice size, some over thirty lbs being reported. A few wahoo in the area that I haven’t gotten around to fishing for just yet. And right on cue, the mullet run/bait migration has gotten underway. Bait schools being harrased by everything from bluefish to tarpon are moving along the area beaches. Great fun watching the melee’, sharks slashing, tarpon crashing, snook popping. Can be tough competing with so much food in the water, but spectacular to see. The weather dictates just how long that will be going on, but mid October should see the bait schools starting to thin out. Saw my first spinner shark jumping the other day, as well as the first school of skipjack tuna. Looks like we’ll go right from the summer menu of fishing opportunities into the winters target rich environment.

As you can tell from the lack of reports over the past couple months, business has been brisk and fishing has been out of control. We’re finishing up one of the best seasons of false albacore/bonito fishing I have ever seen. Huge numbers of albies in x-large sizes have been in the area for the past four months plus and the action has been nonstop. The biggest albie of the season was a 19.5 pounder and the “smaller” twelve to sixteen pound fish were as thick as anyone had ever seen. I had the honor of getting Chico Fernandez his biggest albie ever, a fat seventeen pounder. The past several weeks has had big numbers of the small six to ten pound fish, hinting at another banner year on big fish for next season. A single angler was averaging about twenty fish a day, ( if they could stand it that long ) so with a couple of guys onboard ( in good shape with no heart problems ) the numbers were really adding up. I should have kept accurate count when the things showed up in early april, ( two months early ), but as a guess, counting nothing under five pounds, I think a seasons total of close to five thousand fish is pretty realistic. Man, what a season. It’s going to take my hands several weeks to heal up from all the line cuts caused by leadering fish at the boat. With so much time spent on the albies, the other fish in the area haven’t been getting much attention until recently, but the king mackerel fishing has also been nonstop for the most part, we boated several nice ones last week with Jim Gray getting a dandy twenty pounder. I also managed to beat up on a thirty pound jack last week, ( picture on front page ) and there has been some snook fishing going on. Dolphin were at best sporadic up until recently, but there’s been some good numbers showing up the past couple of weeks. I can’t believe it’s already moving into September, where did this year go? The mullet run/bait migration is just around the corner and all the fireworks that creates. The inshore snook and tarpon and the offshore dolphin, skipjack tuna and if we’re lucky a wahoo or two to keep us occupied through until the winter cold fronts bring in the jacks, ladyfish, bluefish and my best buddies the spinner sharks sometime in December. 2003 is going to be a year to remember and a hard one to beat.

Things were pretty wild last week. The annual Gilmore Guys trip went off pretty much without a hitch. Tom Gilmore is a customer who has been fishing with me some six or seven years now. He is from NJ and is so much of an albie junkie that he wrote a very nice and informative book on the subject, (False Albacore, by Tom Gilmore, Countryman Press), pretty much required reading for anyone looking for info on albies. Anyhow, since Tom found out about the massive numbers and sizes of the albies,(not to mention the long season and great weather while they’re here), he’s been bringing groups of anywhere between three and eight northeast fly flingers down in June or July to do extended battle. This year we had seven, including a photographer and a videographer to chronicle the event. I didn’t even bother to count the fish that came into the two boats, but Tom who seems to have a realistic counting method, had a four day total of close to, if not exceeding, four hundred albies. My hand look like I was in a knife fight from leadering fish. Up north, a ten pound albie is considered nice and a twelve pounder a trophy. It got to the point we weren’t even taking pictures of the twelve pounders. Fourteen and sixteen pounders were coming over the side with good regularity, and several seventeen and eighteen pound fish were also accounted for. The one time I picked up a rod,(only at the invitation of my anglers who were all busy with their own fish), I think I managed the biggest albie of the trip at nineteen point five pounds. I was certain it was a blackfin tuna when it hit, one of my favorite eating fish. So, with that incentive, I kicked it’s butt in about ten minutes. It’ll stand probably in my top five biggest albies to date. There were probably a couple hundred blue runners and rainbow runners that were boated as well as several nice dolphin that uncharacteristically were inside the reef mixed in with the albies. A wahoo was lost, I believe several blackfins also and a blue marlin came by the boats once just to give everyone a heart attack. And that is what been coming over the sides of my boat for the past week or so. Other things I haven’t gotten around to are good action on snook, dolphin moving in in bigger numbers, if not bigger sizes, some monster jacks cruising the bait school along the beach and the tarpon continue to chew pretty well from what I’ve been hearing.

Things just keep rolling along here in S. Florida. We finished up a spectacular season on the spinner sharks with over five hundred hook-ups and almost three hundred released. Some other stats that may be interesting/humorous for your reading pleasure are as follows: 1)Seventeen broken rods,(this includes everything from smashed rods to ripped off guides to reel seats un-seated), seven reels with drags that were either locked up or in complete free-spool. 2)At least ten fly lines lost,(most of these were lost to either sharks other than the one hooked running into the line, or bluefish snapping at the line while a shark was going off on it’s run). 3)Three hundred and fifty yards of leader material. 4)Almost six hundred shark flies, and my personal favorite….. 5)Three spools of thirty yards each of waterproof medical tape used for busted knuckles, line burns and wearing grooves with the backing while reeling in several hundred yards of line. I spent as much time as possible with a digital video camera in my hand during shark season, some of the footage I got is incredible stuff. At some point in the future I’ll be putting together a DVD for interested parties. Luckily,  upon the sharks departure, a good run of nice sized dolphin in the ten to thirty pound range moved into the area to keep me from going into “shark withdrawl”. About the same time, nice smoker sized,(ten to forty lb plus)king mackerel moved into the area. And not long after that, the false albacore,(florida bonito) moved in almost a month early from their usual arrival date. While the dolphin have thinned out as of this writing, the kings and albies have been very consistent, and due to cold water to the north, migrating tarpon have holed up along the area beaches and big silver kings have been giving good early morning and late evening action. Combine that with snook starting to arrive in their usual places, blackfin tuna mixing with the albies, rainbow runners, tripletail, and cobia here and there and we have a full plate and a target rich environment going on for the next several months.