Here's what's been going on...

This is the section of the site where I'll report day to day reports of fishing (or lack thereof) from the "Time to Fly". I'll put more recent stuff first and archive older reports. I'll be adding to this section now and then, so check back for updates

02/05/08

This will be about the shortest report I've ever posted.
They took their time but, THE SPINNER SHARKS HAVE ARRIVED!!!!
Gotta go...flies to tie, sharks to annoy!!!

1/28/08

Winter fishing has been pretty interesting as of late. Jacks have poured into the area and have provided some good entertainment. Especially during the post front periods with high winds and cold temps. With waves of ballyhoo pouring through, ten thousand jacks rise to the surface and crash everything in sight. Easily a good reason to brave twenty mile an hour winds. And employing a teaser plug on a spinning rod can bring a hundred jacks charging the boat, an easy cast for most everyone that isn't so intimidated by the sight that they aren't backing up in the boat.
Bluefish and Spanish mackerel schools are along the beaches, both of which are in a slightly higher weight range than typical. Some of the bigger blues have been upwards of ten pounds and the Spanish mackerel have been very nice in the five pounds and slightly larger range.
In recent weeks some truly huge king mackerel have taken to cruising the outer edges of the Spanish mackerel schools, weights over fifty pounds have been recorded, though we haven't gotten tangled up with one like that on fly, some twenty pounders have been caught. We have been encountering more cobia here and there during good visibility, we boated another forty pounder a week ago.
During good weather windows we have managed some dolphin offshore. Last Thursday Darren Selznick, owner of the Old Florida Fly Shop in Boca and I managed to catch six or seven, keeping just two for dinner. I hear reports of false albacore and medium sized blackfin tuna putting in sporadic appearances, but I always seem to be elsewhere doing other things when that occurs.
One of the more interesting pass times of late has been using fast sinking fly lines on rock piles, reefs and wrecks. Some of the more exotic species coming over the side have been various snapper,(mutton, yellowtail, lane and even a few vermillion snapper, a truly special catch since they are more often found in very deep water out of the range of any sinking fly line) horse-eye jacks, juvenile amberjacks and even a few grouper. The depths we've been working have been as deep as eighty feet and on days when surface/sight casting opportunities have been nil, the fast sinkers have been a real day saver.
The back bays have had good number of ladyfish, pompano, barracuda, smaller jacks and other assorted light tackle fare such as croaker and seatrout.
Twenty possible species is nice, (my best one day total is fifteen), all in all, pretty decent fishing. Though the spinner sharks have been MIA and the sailfish bite has been less than stellar, both of those situations I hope will change shortly. We have had a succession of cold fronts moving through, (the same frontal systems that have caused all the crappy weather throughout the rest of the country) and that is just the kind of weather change to stir the pot and get things really popping.

11/01/07
Most often when there is a large gap between fishing reports it is due to fishing way too good to take time out from to write said report. Sadly, this is not the case with this lengthy hiatus. While the fishing has been good, I have had very few clients recently to come take advantage of the fishing, and between some rather crummy weather and pressing projects at home fun fishing time has been limited. I have found some time to get out there to find dolphin fishing has been good, some occasional skip jack tuna action present itself, small blackfin tuna in good numbers, and the winter visitors, (fish, not snowbirds) are beginning to arrive. Schools of bluefish, mackerel, and jacks are all making appearances, and numbers of sailfish continue to rise.  I plan on spending as much time as possible this fall and early winter out dragging teasers and hooking sailfish, at least until the spinner sharks arrive sometime in January.
As I write this, tropical storm Noel is passing off to the east and the winds have been strong and constant out of that direction for almost a week. I hope to find the fishing on fire when the ocean gets back to normal, because I have just about run out of things to do

08/09/07
Yes, it has been quite a while since the last report. Weather has been perfect fishing weather, bait has been in good supply and the species list has been nice. False albacore have been the mainstay and continue to be at numbers that that force you to admit that enough is enough and go off in search of other species. And since the middle of July, some world record class fish have been in good supply, with albies in the fifteen pound and up range a daily occurrence. One of my clients had several in the sixteen to seventeen pound range and two eighteen pounders on the same day. I think the Motrin flowed heavily that night.
Dolphin fishing is also very consistent, though the distance one must travel to find them changes daily. In early July eight to ten miles was a good distance to run to find them,with quite a few showing up while chumming the albies just a mile or two off the beach. But lately, most of the better action requires a twelve to fifteen mile jaunt. And that's ok because the new boat makes that kind of a run in no time at all and generally we have no interference from other boats out that distance. The same area has produced some nice tripletail hanging on decent debris. I keep hearing about roving schools of skipjack tuna, though I have yet to see them. Not to worry, the fall usually has plenty of encounters with those purple speedsters.
King mackerel have been around in fishable numbers and in the perfect size range for fly. Those eight to fifteen pound kings just love to eat flies. And a few in the twenty-pound range have cooperated lately also.
In the past couple of weeks, the snook have started cooperating very well and some dandy fish have come over the side.
Some odds and ends of barracuda, big jacks, rainbow and blue runners round out the action we have been seeing.
I'll be adding a bunch of new pictures to the gallery, I have a new camera that takes great pictures. Check it out.

05/23/07
The fishing has continued to be exceptional, even if the weather has been less so. Normally, our winter winds have died down for the most part by early May. But here it is the fourth week of the month and the wind is making the ocean pretty uncomfortable. Oh, well. Not to worry. Jacks, snook and barracuda have been cooperating well in the calm waters of the ICW, and the tarpon are warming up nicely.The bait schools are getting thicker on the inside and that will help getting things even more reved up.
In between the wind blowing, offshore has been great. The albies keep getting more in numbers and size. Hordes of medium sized fish in the three to eight pound range are to be had at will. And in the last week, their big brother have arrived in force. Fish in the ten pound and up range have started making more regular appearances. And black fin tuna are mixing in. They run in the twenty to thirty five pound range, and though it takes some real skill with a heavy dose of luck to pick a blackfin out of a mass of rampaging albies, getting them past the bull sharks takes even more.
Dolphin, as everyone who knows me is aware, are my favorite fish to play with and what a show they have been putting on. We may end up catching more dolphin and more big dolphin than even last fall which was world class. Large numbers of smaller schoolie sized dolphin and plenty of quality fifteen to "Oh, my god" sized dolphin have been in the area. There have been alot of dolphin in the fifty pound range caught, and at least one seventy pound fish caught off our coast this spring. And I heard rumor of a 93 pounder caught right over in the Bahamas a week or so ago. I think I would have a heart attack if one like that swam up to the boat!
This spring will go down as the best cobia run I can remember. For several months now, large numbers of cobia have been, and continue to be, in the area. Thats one of the things that has been making chumming the albies so crazy. The typical scenario is I get the boat on the reef edge and start marking albie schools on the depth finder. Start the chumming and up come the albies with the following groups of blue runners, rainbow runners and other assorted critters. You know the bull sharks are getting close when the remoras show up, little frickin vacuum cleaners that they are, eat everything in sight. And up come the packs of three to eight monster bull sharks, all of them between eight and ten foot plus. Which though a little tough to get the albies through, the accompanying cobia come to investigate what the activity at the boat is all about and there is a mad dash to get a fly in front of one.
Loads of fun.
All that has kept me so busy, I haven't even had time to go try the king mackerel out that have been chewing up a storm. I'll get around to them shortly at the very least to keep things varied. I'm hoping the winds lay down by Memorial Day, because that is the time I generally start looking for the tarpon, (the big migratory adults, not our resident juveniles) to start moving through the area. After the stellar action we had on the big guys last fall, I'm actually looking forward to sending some silver slobs skyward.
So, that's pretty much what has been keeping me occupied. For what it is worth, I still have plenty of open days between now and the end of August when this melee' usually slows down, though the albie/dolphin/king mackerel fishing action continued last year right through September. Here's hoping that repeats. That will take us right to the start of the bait migration and all the craziness that involves.

04/07/07
While fishing has been entertaining enough, this winters weather has been a real hindrance. Lots of wind, something that doesn't normally bother me or the fish, but from directions and at speeds that made fishing extremely difficult. We had three weeks right in the middle of spinner shark season that the winds were screaming and the ocean was just plain ugly. And not only did the sharks show up late, the exit date for them turned out to be April 1st. So the shortest season I can remember for them with the worst weather I can remember. And the sailfish action never really amounted to much, at least not enough numbers or action that would have made trying for them on fly worthwhile.
The other stuff was fairly routine, inshore ladyfish, jacks, snook and barracuda and when the weather cooperated well enough to get out on the ocean, the spanish mackerel, bluefish and king mackerel were very consistent. Some of the encounters with monster jack crevalle were very entertaining. And I had several days on skipjack tuna in a size range approaching the biggest I've ever seen. Lots of wahoo reports from the trollers
Now most of that is over or very shortly to end and it'll be on to the spring and summer menu. The dolphin fishing was surprisingly consistent through the winter, and even a few false albacore remained in the area. I'm also hearing rumors of schools of king mackerel heading this direction. I'm going to take that as a sign that, like last year, the spring action will begin by the middle or end of April if not sooner.

01/25/07
Can't really say we've been rocking the world here. Consistent jacks, spanish and king mackerel, ladyfish and barracuda, but the sailfish action has been less than stellar. I had hoped for a repeat of the past several years of sailfish action, but it has not happened as of yet. Though as writing this, the temperature outside is about 42 degrees with the wind chill and that holds promise of getting the spindlebeaks going. Up until now, our weather and water temps have been very high, running about seven degrees above normal. While that has held some of the winter species at bay, we actually have had decent fishing for tarpon, dolphin and even some false albacore have remained in the area,(though after almost five thousand releases on the albies last season, I really don't need to see another one of those till next May). And I guess the spinner sharks were not in a hurry to get here either. I normally see the first groups of spinners right around Xmas, and here it is late January and they are just now starting to show up. Maybe that will mean they will have a late departure. One can only hope, I never get tired of the spinners.
I'll try to get a few more reports up in the next couple of weeks to make up for the hiatus I've been on.

11/25/2006
Well, I guess it's time for a report of what has been going on. We had a great fall bait migration/mullet run. Tarpon fishing was good, and there was some exceptional dolphin fishing for this time of year. But here it is the end of November and the winter visitors are showing up in impressive numbers already. Spanish mackerel, bluefish, jacks galore, ladyfish and pompano are all "in" and chewing. The jack schools are truly huge, numbering in the thousands, and of all sizes from scrappy five to ten pounders up to "break out the big stick" thirty pounders and beyond.
The sailfish are starting to show, not in huge numbers yet, but enough to get out and try for them. We've had two shots at teased up fish, that for technical problems beyond our control, didn't happen. But I've made a vow to get at least ten sails on fly in the next month and a half, so this won't be the last time you'll be hearing about sailfish. Considering that every winter during the December through January time frame, there is a week or two of sailfish action that rivals anything anywhere in the world. Being in on one of those bites could very well account for ten sails on fly in a single day. I'm rigged, ready and hoping to see something like that.
There has been a decent amount of dolphin being caught and some king mackerel also in the area. And that will be the "menu" for the foreseeable future. The only player still not in the game are the spinner sharks and they should be along shortly

9/20/2006 
Here it is the middle of September already. The summer went flying by once again with a steady stream of false albacore, king mackerel, spanish mackerel and a decent amount of dolphin. The action on the reef edge was spectacular with albies, rainbow and blue runners chewing up a storm. June was once again "shark month" with huge bull sharks peeling off our albies at every opportunity. While each daily customer got a big kick out of that, it was getting pretty old for me, especially with each fish eaten went the fly, translating into even more fly tying than what I was already doing. To take my frustration out at this, I would take one of the mangled albies, (most were eaten whole, but a few decapitated carcasses made it back to the boat), and hang it by a rope off the side of the boat. When a bull shark went after it, I would "tease" it up to the side of the boat. Some of these guys were so aggressive, they would latch a hold on the albie and refuse to let go. I could pull their entire head and shoulders up out of the water, jaws snapping, tail throwing water over the entire boat. If I had time, I would grab the gaff that was laying within reach and bring the handle down on the things head with as much force as I could muster. Put a pretty decent bend in the gaff handle and didn't phase the shark in the least. Fruitless I know, but satisfying nonetheless.
The numbers of albies coming over the side really hit a peak from about the middle of June through the end of August. You could go out and just throw a fly around with no chum and easily catch a dozen fish in a couple hours. With two or three anglers onboard and a load of chum, fifty fish days were pretty common. And here it is the middle of September and the albies are still here. That is officially the longest they've ever been here with a solid five month season!
Some of the other stuff I've been doing has been using fast sink lines for the king mackerel. As with the albies, large schools have been here most of the summer and they also show no signs of leaving. Fairly easy stuff, get the fly deep into the school and just twitch it along. The strike for a king moving twenty mph + when it crashes the fly is truly an impressive strike. And when he feels the hook, the turbo activates and off they go at close to fifty. A very cool thing if you like watching line melt off the reel.
And we had the ultimate in line melting one day in July when a fifty pound plus wahoo hung around the boat for fifteen minutes eating dead pilchards one at a time. I tried every trick I know to get him to eat a fly. He wouldn't eat one with wire on it. He did clip two flies off with just a mono leader, and then he wouldn't go near a fly, but he did keep right on eating the dead pilchards. I finally had to resort to feeding him a bait with a hook in it, something I've only done about five times in my career, but no one is going to quibble about how to get a fifty pound 'hoo in the boat, right? I actually had to cut a fly apart to get a hook to put the bait on, not a single bare hook in the boat.
So, he ate the bait, I set the hook and handed the rod off to the first of my three anglers. Well, the wahoo was obviously unsure of what was going on because it did a very lazy one hundred yard run straight out in front of the boat. Now it's rare, but some of these things don't ever get warmed up for a real run, so thinking this was the case I started motoring after the fish. Just about then the line goes slack, and I immediately think he's shaken the hook, but I hit reverse attempting to keep the line tight just in case he is still connected. And out of the corner of my eye I see this flash that looked exactly like a bolt of lightning underwater. I even glanced up at the sky looking for the thunderhead from where a bolt may have been reflected in the water. It actually was wahoo coming back past the boat at a speed I can't even begin to guess at. They say these things top out at over sixty mph in the water, and I believe this one was traveling every bit of that. It came from a hundred yards in front of the boat and finished its run over three hundred yards in the other direction. And it took about twenty seconds to do it. All three of my clients took turns on the fish trying to get it close, but it was not meant to be, the hook pulling free at the end of thirty minutes.
So, here it is, the middle of September and the fall bait migration is in full swing. Mullet, sardines, menhaden and pilchards all moving south and every conceivable predator blasting away at them. Snook, tarpon, jacks, mackerel, bluefish,ladyfish, sharks....everyone getting in on the last big feed of the summer. The dolphin fishing has picked up considerably in the last week, and even some small blackfin tuna are showing up, which usually heralds skipjack tuna moving through the area. So basically, seeing over fifteen species on any given day right now is pretty typical.
It makes me semi crazy that this time of year has spectacular fishing, but business is pretty quiet. All this fishing to be done and I'm out by myself doing it. Everyone is probably getting kids back in school and getting ready for the upcoming holidays. I'll try to keep the reports and stories coming for those of you forced to live vicariously...but I can't promise that I don't  get so distracted by the fishing that you don't hear from me again till the spinner sharks show up in January...

06//21/06
Busy, busy, busy. Summer fishing in high gear. Albies, snook, tarpon, dolphin, tuna and too many bull sharks chasing,(and catching) hooked fish. Things were darn near spectacular since the middle of April, and with very little in the way of interference from poor weather thankfully. Too busy to keep track of the numbers of fish caught, flies tied, etc. I'd hazard a guess we crossed the 1K number of albies landed about the end of May, which is pretty wild since that's just about the time the albies normally arrive!
A wrench has been thrown into everything this week however, we have a cold water up welling in progress. A normal occurrence during the summer here, strong currents flowing up against the shelf push deep water up to the surface and then in along the beaches and reefs. Divers have been reporting water temps of almost twenty degrees departure from normal on the bottom, and surface temps are cold also. But these things happen fast, and usually go away fast, so it should be short lived....hopefully.
One of the more entertaining things in the past month was a quick over and back one day trip to the western Bahamas with some buddies on their new 25 foot Bluewater. We went in search of skipjack and yellowfin tuna, which we never found in over a hundred and forty miles of searching. We did get a couple of dolphin and a tripletail or two off of floating debris, but not the stuff we were looking for. So when we found an eleven foot, six hundred pound tiger shark cruising on the surface, of course we couldn't just leave it alone. Sacrificing one of the caught dolphin to the idea, we slashed the dolphin and hung it over the side ala spinner shark technique, and dragged it a short distance to create a scent trail. The tiger hit that trail and came right to the boat. But we just couldn't get the thing fired up enough to hit the shark fly I kept presenting to it on my fifteen weight. Even after letting it bite the dolphin in half, it just wouldn't play. So after it slapped the side of the boat with it's tail and took a couple of exploratory bites at the propeller , I decided to cheat a bit and teach the thing boats weren't such a good thing to hand around. I brought the fly up to a couple inches of the rod tip, and next time he came close, I reached out and stuck the fly in his nose. And that was the last time we saw it. It headed for the bottom at warp two like a broken elevator cable in four thousand feet of water. And I'm not stupid, or young anymore, so while still on the flyline I popped him off. Even with a fifteen weight, I'm sure Mr. Tiger would have kicked my butt all over the ocean for the rest of the week. A guy has to know his limitations....

04/24/06
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.

02/13/06
Well, here we go. Ten weeks of madness. Ten weeks of bleeding knuckles, busted lines, broken rods, and tying flies just as fast as my little fingers can go. Ten weeks of brown missiles flying up to the boat so fast as to make you want to back up. Pouncing on flies, jumping, spinning and a whole lot of running. Ten weeks of wrapping medical tape around fingers, directing anglers like a square dance caller, wrestling with leaders attached to big, toothy critters. Easily some of the toughest, most exciting action fly fishing has to offer anywhere in the world.
Let the games begin.
Besides the flood of spinner sharks that have just arrived in the area, the spanish mackerel, king mackerel, bluefish, jacks, pompano,ladyfish and barracuda,(our normal winter menu) is still going strong, and though the incredible sailfish bite that happened in January has tapered off, the dolphin fishing has picked up considerably with quite a good bit of action on cobia thrown in for good measure.
And besides some up and down swings in mood caused by passing weather, I expect this action to go through into early to mid April. And I still have plenty of open dates for those interested in an ass-whooping.

01/13/06
The baitfish massacre of last month has ended, as it was bound to do. It was spectacular while it lasted, I'd love to see that become a regular event of the November and December time frame, I could call it the "winter warm up". But we've moved on now to more typical and also very entertaining fishing for January. Bluefish, Spanish mackerel, (some of the Spanish have been huge, seven or eight pounds and fight more like kingfish), king mackerel pompano, barracuda, ladyfish and the first encounters with spinner sharks. There are also some spots literally choked with nice jacks in the ten to twenty pound range. One spot especially has been very cool. The jacks are in a massive school on the bottom in about forty feet of clear water. Using a ten or twelve-weight rod, you drop a large surface popper out on a long cast over the school. The first loud "Chug" of the popper causes the water to turn white as the entire school comes up off the bottom to investigate. At the second "chug" a dozen jacks all pile on the popper. Loads of fun.
There has been another spot where just about all of the above-mentioned species are all in attendance in five to twenty feet of water in close along the beach. Several times we've managed four different species on four consecutive casts.
 I managed to explode a twelve weight in this spot a few days ago. The spinner sharks were there, but with so much food in the area, they wouldn't come up a scent trail to throw a fly at. But if I threw around a teaser plug for the bluefish, a dozen bluefish would pile on the plug and this would get the attention of the spinners. The shark would come up behind the pack of bluefish, the bluefish would peel off and the shark would continue after the teaser plug, giving about a three second window where one might get a fly where it needed to be. Well, it was a little beyond what my guy could muster, understandably so, since he had just had his first casting lesson and had never even seen a twelve weight fly rod, so he was doing teaser duty and I was attempting to pick off the shark on the way in. Just as I let go on a long cast, the shark changed direction. The fly landed in the water, I took up the slack and heaved back to pick up the fly and re-direct the cast and just as I reached the apex of the pick-up, a ten pound jack hit the shark fly going the other direction. And Ka Pow!!!!! I've heard a lot of rods break, and this one let go with a sound like a 22 cal. pistol shot. Four extra pieces of the rod lying on the deck. Totally my fault, I'm sure no rod on the market would have survived this experience. And to add insult to injury, the jack is still hooked up, and in the process of hand lining him to the boat, the shark comes back and eats him. Now I'm hand lining, bare handed I might add, a spinner shark. Obviously, and thankfully, this doesn't last long, which is good that I manage to break him off because what was left of the shattered rod, including the reel, were in very real danger of going over the side in a hurry. From rod breaking to the aftermath of the shark-tug-o-war all happened in about twenty seconds, at the end of which my customer looks at me and asks if that was what was supposed to happen. I almost fell over laughing.

12/14/05
"Absolutely the wildest stuff I've ever seen". I've heard that phrase a bunch of times in the past month. I can't do justice with written words to describe the melee' that has been happening in the area around Palm Beach, and even video would only scratch the surface.
Huge schools of bait have been everywhere, small sardines mostly with small pilchards and glass minnows mixed in. And everything under the sun just hammering away at them. Sailfish, king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, jacks, bluefish, ladyfish, tuna, false albacore, sharks and barracuda. And when I say the bait has been everywhere, I mean from horizon to horizon, tens of thousands of birds diving and chasing bait fish that have been pushed to the surface by an equal or greater number of predators. Bait fish showering across the surface, explosions as far as the eye can see.
The bad news is I've been in the process of moving into a new house in Jupiter Fl. and have had almost no time to enjoy this spectacular show. And the few times that I have been in the middle of this insanity, the video camera was not in attendance. This past Tuesday was the most recent. With my customers onboard, we saw schools of sardines so tightly packed by rampaging Spanish mackerel, the top of the school of bait was being lifted out of the water and the uppermost bait fish was suffocating. Drifting past, I was able to reach out with just the dip net for my live well and scoop up a full net of sardines. I'd turn around and throw the whole thing as far as I could and instantly there would be a hundred mackerel in the air. The few remaining baits would cluster around the boat trying to hide, and as the wind pushed us away from the main school, the mackerel would follow the boat until they had picked off every last straggler. Then, after I had dropped my guys off, I went back out to watch the show some more before heading home and was drifting along when a huge pod of bait tried to use the boat for shelter from a school of about two thousand jack Crevalle in the eight to fifteen pound range. The attack went of for half an hour, with the boat centered in an acre patch of foaming white water, jacks crashing, minnows flying. The sound was deafening. Like standing next to Niagra Falls.  The deck of the boat was covered with hundreds of minnows that had jumped in attempting to escape. And I am just kicking myself for not having the video camera.

11/03/05
Here we go again. Another storm came through, and Wilma was quite a storm. Easily stronger and more destructive than last years storms. The hundred mile an hour plus winds at my house were quite impressive and a little disturbing. Trees shredded, roofs wrecked, yada,, yada, yada. I stood in the lee of the house and took video of tree limbs flying past, and trees splintering in my neighbors yard. The video is pretty cool, but the actual feeling that one gets from being in a storm like that just doesn't come through on the film.
The boat is fine however and I even fished the two days following the storm finding massive schools of jacks just off the beach. We even made it out to dolphin country and caught a couple of those. Since then, schools of Spanish mackerel, jacks, bluefish, ladyfish and even a few spinner sharks have been moving into the area. So, it looks like winter fishing may start a bit early this year, and that'll be a great thing if we can just finish the hurricane season without another visiting south Florida.

09-06-05
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.

06-20-05
This is easily my favorite months of the year with a great species list and usually very dependable weather. The weather has thrown us some curves though, a tropical storm has already made a drive by, dousing us pretty well. But I can put up with less than normal South Florida weather when the snook are heating up, tarpon traveling through, albies on the war path,(the albies showed up in mid may in good numbers, almost a month early from last year) big dolphin making appearances, king mackerel here and there, rainbow and blue runners, bull sharks mugging the hooked fish, blackfin tuna, wahoo and sailfish in the area. About as "target rich" an environment as anyone could want. We've boated dolphin up to about twenty pounds, and missed some real bruisers in the thirty and forty pound range. Albie size range has been all over the place with two to eighteen pounds coming over the side. We haven't boated/released any of the tarpon yet, but have launched some skyward that were well over the hunderd pound mark, including one about a hundred thirty pounds that was so close to coming in the boat on one jump, she soaked us with spray. Nothing quite like looking up at a fish six foot long, gills rattling, head thrashing. Now if we can only get through hurricane season without getting smacked.... With daylight savings leaving plenty of light to fish with past eight PM, this time of year is like being a kid in a candy shop...I just can't stop myself from fishing. So, if I'm not regular with the reports, you'll know I'm just fishing my brains out.... This will be the main fish menu for the next six weeks at least.

04-05-05
Busy, busy, busy....places to be, fish to annoy. Things have been good, very good in fact. The sharks are chewing up a storm, so we're trying to make up for lost time. Poor weather and abnormal movements of the shark schools made early season fishing for them tricky or nonexistent. But in the last month they have really turned around and the party has been incredible. To the point I even have my wife Julie tying flies! Other targets have been huge schools of bluefish, monster jacks up well into the thirty pound range. We've been having fun with small king mackerel on shallow water patch reefs, as well as juvenile amberjacks in the same areas. On days when the seas would allow a bit of a run, I've been making the trek up north of Jupiter for the massive schools of spanish mackerel. It is mind boggling the amount of fish in that area year after year, even with all the commercial boats and recreational fishermen taking tons, (literally) of fish each day. and the spanish that we caught were of a good size, fish upwards of six or seven pounds were not a surprise. Bigger king mackerel have started showing up, fish over fifty pounds have been caught in the past couple of weeks. And it looks like the dolphin run is about to get under way, some big schools of peanut dolphin and a decent amount of bigger "phins" are moving in. The cobia fishing has also been good, I heard of a seventy pounder caught last weekend. Thats big for our area, most of those oh, so tasty critters average twenty to forty pounds here. I'm not sure just how long the shark show will continue, with their uncharacteristic patterns this winter, I'm not going to be surprised whatever they do. But I hope to get a few more days, hopefully a week and in my dreams we'll still be banging them in May. But it looks like we'll have dolphin and kings and, very shortly, albies to play with when the sharks move on their way. A couple of side stories. Speaking of albies. In February, we were treated to a mini run of summer time sized albies up to about fifteen pounds. Was quite a cool thing, especially considering they were blasting bait on the surface in water less than forty feet of water right outside the inlets. Great fun and a serious eye opener for my guys that don't normally get to see the boneheads. Those little kings I was speaking of put on a serious airial display a couple of times. For those of you who don't know, when kings feed on the surface, they have the tendency to overshoot their target. This results in the king launching itself a decent distance in the air. The bigger the king, the higher they go. We call this a "skyrocket." These little kings were so voracious a couple of days, multiple kings would line up on the fly and there would be two foot long grey missiles coming out of the water all around the fly during the retrieve. On every retrieve, the kings would connect, and you would be looking UP at a king eight to ten feet in the air with your fly crossways in their jaws. There has been too many really cool things over the past couple of months, (I know I haven't been keeping up with the reports, but as I've said many times before, if there are no reports, you can be certain the fishing is very good) to tell all of them. Shots at some of the biggest tripletails I've ever seen, encounters with sailfish, and a beautiful wahoo we boated. But the coolest thing I've seen happened just last week. I was watching what I think was a spinner shark about eighty pounds chasing a bluefish around on the surface about eighty feet from the boat. Just about the time I'm wondering if he would eat a fly if I dropped one on him from that distance, all hell broke loose. Apparently, Mr. Spinner screwed up and wasn't paying attention. Because a massive, fifteen foot long and every bit of a six to eight hundred pound hammerhead shark sneaks up and blasts the spinner. The first strike, Mr. T-head comes completely out of the water with the spinner in his mouth. The spinner manages to escape, but only temporarily. The T-head is charging around in hot pursuit of the spinner which is leaving a plume of blood behind it in the water. I would never have believed that a shark of this size could get moving that fast. The spinner never had a chance. The hammerheads nails it twice more and the spinner is toast. The last sight of the spinner I got it was crossways in the hammerheads jaws, the beast swimming on the surface looked just like a monster dog carrying a bone. This all happens in about twenty seconds, with my customers freaking, and I admittedly gawking, and the video camera laying there, I missed the whole thing. It was really a reminder that Everything is in the food chain.

01-28-05
I'm going to start calling this time of year the "Season of teeth". Seems like toothy critters outnumber everything else by three to one right now. Baracuda, bluefish, sharks, spanish and king mackerel. There are other non-toothy fish playing as well, jacks, pompano, ladyfish. I am getting a little tired of the unusually poor weather we've been getting this winter though, nice fishing weather for a few days, then five days of screaming winds. At the time of this writing, the wind is again blowing hard. We managed a very respctable day yesterday despite the wind(20 knots sustained, gusts over 30) with six cudas up to three feet long, eight jacks up to about six lbs and a couple of small snook, which were a big surprise with the cold water. Maybe we'll get all the wind out of the way and the spring fishing will be nice with calm seas. Last spring we had incredibly windy weather and April and May passed with alot of the years best dolphin fishing being unreachable. My main target this time of year is the spinner sharks, those rabid-tarpon, whirling dervishes, "I'm getting my butt kicked" fish that I love so much. Perhaps it's the unusual weather, but they are late. Normally very punctual in arriving the first week of January, here it is the end of the month and I just saw the first good group showup a few days ago. Thank god, I thought I would need to find a threapist if the sharks didn't show soon. I'm hoping the late arrival will mean a late departure. The historic date the spinners leave is the first week of April. Some other very odd occurances are also worthy of note for the winter season. There has been a very good showing of blue marlin and yellowfin tuna recently. The first are typically way too big,(averaging 250 lbs to start) to even attempt on fly, the later is a species we never see here. The yellowfins prefer the east side of the gulf stream, and it would please me to no end if we would continue to have some in the area. They are a spectacular fighting fish, easily one of the fastest and toughest of the tuna species. That is all the news from my corner of the pond.

12-06-04
I had no idea it had been almost three months since I posted a fishing report. There has been a lot going on, unfortunately not enough of it has been fishing. Right after my last update, Hurricane Jeanne came through our area on a carbon copy of the track Hurricane Frances followed. Same amount of wind and rain, only difference was Jeanne moved considerably faster and damaged was minimal. I really feel for the homes left with roof damage from Frances. The rain from Jeanne was what really wrecked everything left exposed from the first storm. And shortly after Jeanne, the remnants of Hurricane Ivan moved back over the area with more rain, though little wind. In August no one would have believed we would get three hurricanes in the same month. Most would count it all as a really rude wakeup call living in the tropics can mean. Call it good timing if you will, in the middle of all this, in early October, I had surgery on my left shoulder to correct what thirty plus years of stripping fly line caused. A bone spur removed, slight tear in the rotator cuff attended to, and the removal of, in my Dr.'s words "a surprising amount of Bursitis." My own form of Fly fishing Carpal Tunnel syndrome I guess. I'll call it good timing on the surgery because we couldn't really fish during the storms obviously and the calls for trips pretty much ceased immediately after. I got the green light from the Dr. to go back to work around the 15th of Nov, and I was out the door like a shot. I don't suffer convalescence gracefully to put it mildly. To tell the truth, only twelve days after the surgery I was wading streams in the Texas hill country fishing for Guadalupe bass. Good thing they max out in size at about ten inches, right up my ally considering my condition. But home is where the heart is and I was drooling to get back out on the water here in Florida. In the interim of the storms coming through and my recovery, winter fishing patterns have come on strong. In the dozen or so trips I've done since getting back to work, southward migrating tarpon, winter schools of jack crevalle of all sizes, small tuna and dolphin offshore, spanish mackerel, ladyfish and bluefish have all been encountered. Probably the coolest thing going on this past week was the first wave of sailfish showing up. While a decent number were moving through the normal travel route along the reef about a mile offshore, a good amount were in very close to shore chasing large schools of ballyhoo. Water depths as little as ten feet of water, the sails could be plainly visible cutting through the baitfish, bills slashing. We haven't been able to get one to commit to eating a fly yet, but on several occasions one would chase the fly eighty feet back to the boat, whacking it all the way before turning off at the last minute. Enough to get anyone with a pulse weak kneed. In just the past day or so, some much bigger dolphin up into the thirty pound range have started moving through, and I saw my first spinner sharks of the winter free jumping. I plan on catching up on the fishing I've missed this fall in a hurry and will have more to write about shortly

09-18-04
As I've been saying for a couple years, we're long overdue here for a hurricane, and when one does come through, it'll be a hell of a mess. Well, it's a hell of a mess here. Hurricane Frances came through, taking her time and pretty much wrecked everything except the fishing. I'm sure you've all seen the damage it wrought, trees splintered, roofs gone. We were without power for about nine days. That's a long time without A/C in September. The house, cars and best of all, the boat came through without any damage luckily. While almost everyone has power back, the cleanup will be in progress for a long time. Obviously I haven't been doing much fishing with this going on, my last charter trip was the week before the storm came through. I made a foray out immediately after the storm to observe the damage. Lots of sailboats now lawn ornaments, lots of docks and yachts now artificial reefs. But the storm didn't affect the fall mullet run/bait migration in the least. It's is well underway, lots of action on snook, tarpon, sharks, jacks and other assorted predators harassing the schools of hapless mullet. We even caught bonito in close to the beach yesterday. And so begins the transition from summer to fall fishing, leading soon to winter.

08-18-04
Albies are winding down. There are still a few small ones around, an occaisional big guy, but most have moved on. I didn't keep good records of numbers from this season, but a total of around 2000 seems about right. Biggest fish were in the eighteen pound range. And judging from the hordes of "small" six to eight pound fish, next year is going to have large numbers of big fish. Now we come into the mixed-bag time of year when the species list gets pretty cool. We had a ten species day this past monday with dolphin, albies, rainbow and blue runners, king and spanish mackerel, jack crevalle, cudas, snook and snapper. About thirty fish plus came over the side. More of the same yesterday, including a dolphin jaunt offshore where we finally found a decent number of dolphin. Small fish in the two to five pound range, we scaled down to six weights to make them a bit more fun. This should be the norm for the next month or so when the fall mullet/bait run gets underway and things should get really nuts with huge schools of bait moving around with an entire entorage of predators following.

07-17-04
We have been having a pretty typical, Albies-out-of-control June and July here in Southeast Florida. Hordes of fish, averaging around ten pounds, fish into the upper teens on a fairly regular basis. My hands look like I've been clumsy sharpening my fillet knife from all the line cuts. It's a wonderful thing. We must be getting good at this thing judging from the lack of broken rods. Only four this year so far. And two reels that had melt downs. We also had some very good tarpon fishing in the area this year. I didn't get to take advantage of the action as much as I'd like since most of my customers this time of year are "Albie-junkies", but an excellent guide I know in the area that did concentrate on the silver kings is closing in on his two hundredth of the year. We had a couple days on king mackerel that was a nuts as it gets, with fifteen to forty pound fish blasting chum baits, tearing holes in the water and skyrocketing fifteen feet in the air all around the boat. Dolphin fishing has been lack luster for the most part, few fish and long distances to run to find them, though I think that will be changing next month. Snook at area inlets have been grouping up and we had several this week in the twenty pound range. Things to look forward to next month should be more snook at the inlets, juvenile tarpon in the ICW, sailfish showing in good numbers as in the past four or five Augusts, some of the best chances to get a wahoo of the year, hopefully some dolphin and the albies starting to thin out. This is just a quick report to try to stay up to date with the action here. I'm off on a much deserved break for the next couple of weeks. Tight lines.

06-01-04
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.

04-25-04
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.

03-08-04
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.

01-01-04
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

12-14-03
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.

11-10-03
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.

09-25-03
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.

08-20-03
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.

06-30-03
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.

05-20-03
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.

04-01-03
Well, the spinner sharks are still in the area, much to my delight. It was 3/26/02 when they pulled their mass evacuation last year and every one of about ten thousand sharks disappeared in twenty-four hours. A very impressive coordinated effort that hasn't happened just yet. I don't have a clue what the trigger is that causes them to high tail it out of here, and I don't think I want to know. It'll just depress me that the spectacular sport these things provide is coming to an end for the year. The cold front that is currently blasting through my neighborhood,(winds are over 20 knots sustained with gusts over thirty) may just find the spinners gone when it is done later this week. We'll see. Our weather has been so good from a fishing standpoint this winter, that a good wind storm was inevitable, and probably needed, in coming. And there's still hordes of bluefish around, this will easily be the best bluefish winter ever here in Palm Beach. I'm sure we crossed the fifteen hundred mark on landed fish for the blue chompers. And the pods of big jack crevalle are making their appearance right on que. The next month or two will give us shots at jacks in the fifteen to forty pound range. But the consolation is that it looks like we might be having an "overlap year" on species arrival. Generally, it's not a surprise to find the winter fish leave and there be a slight lull in the action for a week or two be fore water temps and whatever it is that causes the arrival of the kings, dolphin, false albacore and the tarpon and snook to wake up enough to start feeding,(same thing happens in the fall). But with the exception of snook, we have caught all of those species in the last week or two. One really neat thing was finding albies running around in the surf, from seven feet of water out to about twenty. Not huge fish, they were about four to seven pounds, but there was no shortage of them. We were able to target them on ridiculously small gear, getting all the way down to five weights. And a six or seven pound albie on a five weight is pretty much out of control. Great fun. Also had some running around weather last week to get out and find some dolphin, and though the ones we found were not large at all, again fine light tackle fare with fish in the three to five pound range. Well, with what looks like a "wind delay" for at least a day or two, I think I'll take advantage and start pumping out albie and dolphin flies as fast as I can...

03-17-03
Pretty much the same report with a few additions. The sharks, jacks, bluefish and spanish mackerel have continued to put on a very entertaining show. The pompano have moved on for the most part, but quite a few false albacore and huge school of king mackerel have taken their place. The kings can be very good fun, even for those somewhat "fly challenged" due to there being very little need for distance casting. Deep drifted flies get smacked about as fast as they sink deeper than twenty five feet. You basically just feed out enough of the fast sinking line to get it down to where the kings are and start twitching the fly. Hang on tight though, I think a king hits the fly going about twenty miles an hour, and then hits the afterburners when it feels the hook. About the fastest thing you can hook around here short of a sailfish or wahoo, the kings top out at over fifty MPH. Most of the kings are running less than fifteen lbs, but there are a few "smokers"(not sure if they're called that because people like big kings to smoke, or because big kings "smoke" your reel) over twenty lbs. Many a drag has been in need of a re-building after a couple encounters with the big kings. The albies have been in good enough supply to chum a few up and we boated several last week in the ten to twelve pound range. A nice treat since they're usually not even around this time of year. Dolphin have also started to show up, a prelude to my favorite months of the year for big slammer dolphin. We have dolphin in the area for the most part year round, but April and May have the majority of big mahi mahi over fifteen lbs. Dolphin on fly is easily one of my favorite things to do. While there are a few fish that run faster, pull harder, not too many fish jump better or more frequently than dolphin. And nothing does all that and tastes great to boot. Cobia are also passing through the area, though we haven't had any encounters with them, fish of over fifty lbs have been hitting the dock on a fairly regular basis. About the only thing missing are the blackfin and skipjack tuna, and I'm expecting to start seeing them this coming month also. Looks like spring fishing is about ready to bust loose here in south Florida.

02-21-03
I don't have much of anything new to report. The bluefish, jacks, spanish mackerel have, for the most part, continued chewing up a storm. Ladyfish have also shown up in the same area, nice fish in the two to four pound range. And the sharks have continued to put a spectacular show most days. The recent weather changes has made everything a little moody, but hasn't shut the whole show down by any means. One special treat of late has been some of the best pompano fishing in years. These mini-permit have been right in the middle of all the action, so getting past the other, more voracious critters has been the main trick. The pompano like flies dragged right across the bottom, and won't tolerate a heavy leader. So on the way down and on the way back up, many flies have been neatly clipped off by the blues and spanish mackerel. But the pompano hit a fly like a knock out punch, one of the hardest strikes of anything their size. And of course they are some of the best table fare going. That's about all for now.

02-01-03
Time is just flying by here in south Florida, a byproduct of very entertaining fishing. The bluefish and jacks are still chewing up a storm, teaser plugs tossed into the schools and ripped back to the boat at warp speed brings a foaming, frothing wave of fish charging. And a fly dropped into the melee is just a forgone conclusion, perfect six and eight weight action. Occasionally, one of the spinner sharks will zero in on the action and relieve us of one of the jacks or blues. Since we're running wire traces for the blues, (and the jacks don't care) several times we've ended up with a spinner on a rod never meant to endure such an encounter. The trick has been to pop him off before all the line on those tiny reels disappears. Schools of bigger jacks in the ten to twenty pound range have also started appearing and the teaser plugs bring the same result, only in a faster, more explosive version for the larger nine and ten weights. The afternoons have been spent battling the sharks deliberately, with their cooperation level being fairly consistent with a few days they just were not in the mood to play. I haven't been keeping close track of numbers, but close to a hundred released and two hundred hooked is about right. And we still have six weeks or so before they leave for the year. Dolphin and king mackerel have also been OK on the days the offshore scene is comfortable. Nothing of any size, the kings have been seven to fifteen lbs, (although some serious kings over thirty pounds have been reported) and the dolphin all under ten. But matching the appropriate gear and you can still have your hands full. Other incidental catches include a nice ten pound grouper Kyle Shannon caught out of the middle of a school of jacks, still not sure what he was doing there. Dave Ulmer also had a treat this week with some out of season albies showing up. Caught about half a dozen up to ten lbs. Been having large groups of monster permit giving me fits. They show up right at the boat while the motor is running as if to say " Hi, how ya doin? We know you don't have any crab flies for us to eat, so we'll see ya later ". I don't think there is a crab fly out there big enough to get these guys attention, some of which are well in excess of forty pounds. And that is life in south Florida.

01-07-03
Well, the boys are back in town. The spinner sharks started showing up at the end of last week. First day out was a solo trip on thursday, and I hooked five and got three to the boat. Releasing one of those bad boys is quite a trick solo. Anyhow, friday morning we managed zero to the boat out of four hooked. And sunday only three to the boat out of twelve hooked. This is hands down my favorite thing to do during the winter and I'm looking forward to playing with the "brown bombers" for the next couple of months. If the timing happens like it did last year, we can look forward to the sharks being around into late march. Other than that, bluefish, jacks of all sizes, assorted runners, king mackerel and dolphin have been rounding out the action. The sailfish have been in the area, and we've tried a few times for them, but have yet to get any interested in a fly. Seems like the best bite on the sails is during really snotty weather that neither I nor my customers want to screw with. But, other than that, winter fishing is in full swing.

12-15-02
The weather has been changing  rapidly, and that has been keeping the fishing running hot and cold. The fishing for jack crevalle has been the exception, huge numbers of fish providing great action most all of the time. The jacks have been running five to fifteen pounds and hitting poppers on top very nicely. Just before the jacks showed up there was a very good permit bite going on. Not flats fishing, these permit were holding in the inlet and the guys bouncing jig and shrimp combo's on the bottom were scoring big. About the time I got around to giving them a try, a massive school of jacks moved into the area and it was impossible to get anything past them to get to the permit. There has been more and more tarpon moving into the area. It's that time of year when they come south running from colder water temps. We launched on nice tarpon in the seventy pound range last week right in the middle of the day. I've not seen a big push of sailfish into the area just yet, a couple more cold fronts should change that. Most of the action on sails is still north of here. I did get a chance to try out a new teaser rig consisting of a high-speed spreader bar with five daisy chains of ballyhoo rigged on it. The thing looks great in the water, and when the sails show up, I intend to annoy the crap out of a bunch of them. Spotty action on dolphin and king mackerel is more of an indication of less than favorable weather and not a lack of fish. If the weather moderates, there should be some of both going on. I hear the ladyfish and Spanish mackerel have moved into their normal winter spots north of here, something I'll keep in mind when I need a change of pace. The only thing really missing is the spinner sharks. They should be moving in over the next three weeks or so.

11-20-02
The first couple of cold fronts passing through the area has sparked the arrival of our winter menu. Jacks, ladyfish, spanish and king mackerel, spinner sharks and sailfish have all shown up. Some big dolphin also have been around. And a nice treat for us, a bunch of big bluefish, (big for us, four to eight pounds), have also been in the area. The weather has been leaving a bit to be desired though being a bit on the windy side. Directly after the first cold front of the season a week or so ago, quite a few white marlin and a couple of blue marlin were being caught. One spot in along the beach has had clear water and a varitable smorgasbord of targets. We had two-thirds of a slam one day last week with an eight pound permit and a sixty pound tarpon. I wish the bonefish here were a little easier to locate. There were schools of pompano, spanish mackerel, hordes of blue runners and small jacks, the biggest school of bluefish I've ever seen, and for some reason, the tarpon were just fascinated with the boat, grouping up under the boat and following it as we drifted. Not small guys either, these 'poons were all fifty lbs to well over a hundred. Throwing the teaser plugs into the schools of bluefish was a riot. The swarm of blues would come tearing the surface to foam as they chased the teaser back to the boat. This activity would immediately draw the attention of the few spinner sharks, who would charge the blues chasing the teaser. This would understandable bother the blues who would decide they really didn't need to catch the thing skipping accrossed the water and would scatter in the wink of an eye. But the spinner shark would continue after the teaser plug, throwing a headwake like a nuclear submarine. I very gladly lost several teaser plugs to the sharks that particular day. I have to remember to get the video camera out for stuff like this, but it's very easy to just grin like an idiot and watch it all happening.

10-30-02
Dolphin fishing has been pretty good the past couple of weeks, though the unseasonably warm weather and a stalled front to our north has left them in a less than favorable mood. When this front finally passes through they should become more cooperative. The skipjack tuna also have not been liking the weather and have been laying low. The tarpon are still on the beach chasing mullet schools, we were treated to a spectacular show by some very big 'poons hammering one school of mullet. Not one of the dozen or so tarpon were less than a hundred pounds. But they were pretty single minded in their eating, we couldn't get any to even look at a fly. Ladyfish, jacks and some bluefish have been rounding out the action for us. Though not red hot, still decent entertainment. We did have a brief encounter with a spinner shark this past week. About a month early from their usual arrival date, I was very glad to see a few jumping around. After this front passes through, I expect the jacks, spanish mackerel, tuna, dolphin and hopefully sailfish to get really chewing. I can't blame them for being out of sorts, here it is the end of October and we still have light winds and high eighty degree days. Very untypical.

10-14-02
Some of the very best fishing for ladyfish I have ever seen in the past couple of weeks. This is the time of year the ladies pass through the area as the bait migration is happening, and this year fishing for them has been spectacular. Huge schools of very large ladies in the two to five pounds plus range are out along the beaches and the weather has been just perfect. Calm seas and clear water. Numbers over fifty fish in a half day trip, pretty much out of control action with a dozen or more fish fighting over who gets to eat the fly. I had been chumming them, but decided that was needless. If you could just get a fly in the area, they would pound it. Also had some good dolphin action the end of last week. Out by myself on Thursday, I managed three in the box,( had finished off all my dolphin filets long ago) two twenty pounders and a twelve pounder, and released four more in the ten pound range. My customer on Friday also released about a half dz. It was nice to see some starting to show back up after the dolphin drought we experienced all summer. I also heard of some skipjack tuna action going on, but didn't see any of that personally. Tarpon rounded out the menu over the past couple of weeks. Though not red hot, they have been quality fish in the thirty to sixty pound range. One forty five pounder was landed on an eight weight, not the typical tackle you'd like to fight one on, so it took awhile and put on a great jumping show. This is my favorite time of year for the tarpon, with the silver kings all headed south following the bait schools and feeding as they go. A bit of a change from their attitude in spring when they're headed north with traveling and sex being the only things on their minds. We get our first cold front of the fall/winter season coming through this week. That heralds the winter menu's imminent arrival. The ladyfish will move into their usual haunts, but the jacks, spanish mackerel, sailfish and my best buds, the spinner sharks are just around the corner. It should also get the skipjack tuna really chewing.

9-23-02
I don't have a whole lot of fishing to report over the last month. Mainly due to a major boat renovation on the "Time To Fly". It's been twelve years since I bought the boat, and beating the hell out of it has taken it's toll. The fact that it's been driven like a jet ski for that amount of time and it hasn't split in half and gone to the bottom is somewhat amazing. And though nothing had reach structural failure, the transom was on it's way out, the gas tank needed attention and all the wiring and plumbing needed replacing. It took two days to dismantle the boat( removed console, motor, control cables and about three hundred screws and rivets) far enough to lift the deck off with the help of a forklift, prybars and chisels. Another two days to get the gas tank out, buffed down to clean metal and encased in fiberglass. Two days of tearing, cutting, grinding and scraping to get the old transom out. Three days to shape the replacement pieces for the transom,( the transom was in a total of three, 2pc interlocking sections, plus four integrated stringers) and two more days to fiberglass the whole thing together. A couple of days to replace the wires and plumbing. A day to repair the joint where the deck and hull were joined and do various other little things to have it ready to go back together. We lifted the deck back onto the hull thirteen days after pulling it apart. Quite a little backyard project. About five days into it I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I knew how to chew. I had never attempted anything quite this extreme in a rebuild and needless to say, my learning curve was just about vertical. But everything went back together fine and the maiden voyage came off without anything falling off and going to the bottom. And the next trip was a offshore run through about four foot waves which confirmed nothing was going to fail anytime soon. I think this will take me another twelve years down the line. Maybe by then there will be a boat on the market that can compare to the Wahoo, otherwise, I'll be doing it all over again. Now, to the fishing. The mullet run/ bait migration has started. Pods of finger mullet,(little guys, they're the first to come through) have appeared in the intracoastal and just like clockwork, jacks, snook, tarpon, sharks, cudas and ladyfish are blasting the crap out of them. My customers on Saturday afternoon, (probably the only worse time to fish inside here being Sunday afternoon due to boat traffic) boated probably thirty ladyfish, missed at least twice that, several nice jacks and one shark. Also missed several snook and I think at least one tarpon. I haven't been offshore, but I've gotten reports of dolphin, wahoo and tuna being caught. I don't have a lot of trips on the books for the next month or so, a typically slow time of year despite the good fishing. But after the boat project and the busy winter, spring and summer, I plan on treating myself to some fishing. I'll keep you all posted on the results.

8-21-02
The past two months have just flown by. Alot of fish have come and gone. Encounters with sailfish, wahoo and more blackfin tuna than I have ever seen here. I would like to say we boated all three of those species, but I can't. Saw, hooked, played, yes. Boated, no. Even I had Murphy chewing on my ass, I blew shots at three sailfish all in the space of about thirty seconds. Lost blackfin tuna, world record skipjack tuna, had fifty pound wahoo swimming around the boat that wouldn't eat. It certainly has been entertaining. I was very worried about the false albacore this year. They showed up late and the numbers seemed way down. The first wave of fish really started chewing,(they had been here for several weeks, but had been very uncooperative) about the middle of june. There were days that if you didn't want to be fighting an albie, you didn't dare put your fly in the water. Other days, the depthfinder would be just black with fish, but they wouldn't come up and play, or eat a deep drifted fly. Very annoying. But, they finally got with the normal program and we're still banging the crap out of them here in the middle of august. And judging from the huge schools of medium sized fish, next year should be a very good year for trophy sized, fifteen pound and up fish. Unless things change and we get another round with the big guys this year, we'll finish out the season with about twenty some odd albies over fifteen lbs, at least a dz. over seventeen lbs and four twenty pound monsters. That's just what we were able to get to the boat without coming off the hook or getting eaten on the way up by something larger. I hope to get a few more shots at the blackfin tuna that were in good supply in july, there were times that twenty five to forty pounders were crashing around the boat just like jumbo albies. We usually get another run in the fall when they all come back past heading south. What seems to be a typical August run of sailfish and wahoo is going on now, as well as some good tarpon and trophy snook fishing. That will be the main items on the menu until the fall bait migration kicks in towards the end of September. If you haven't seen the mullet run,(thats just what we call it here, there are also glass minnows, sardines, herring and pilchards all running south along the beaches) it is truly a spectacular sight to behold. Huge schools of baitfish with every imaginable predator species following. Huge jacks, tarpon, snook, sharks and even sailfish and king mackerel in shallow water along the beaches chasing bait. The timing on this event changes every year depending on the weather, but mid september through october is about right.

6-18-02
Tarpon in assorted sizes have been in the area in fairly large numbers. We haven't been getting much cooperation out of the larger fish that are in good sized groups out along the beach, have only gotten a handful of strikes and put a couple in the air, but that's tarpon fishing. But anytime you have a six foot long fish in your sights, the adrenaline gets pumping pretty good. The little guys inside the ICW have been consistently eating though for anyone who really wants to get one. Been able to get some snook chummed up, but like everything else, they're really not chewing well yet. A few king mackerel are being caught, and there are some truly huge jack crevalle cruising the bait schools out along the beach. The only really hot action recently has been provided by the false albacore. This past Sunday they put on a spectacular show, there were albies crashing the surface as far as the eye could see. It looked like a hail storm with ten pound hail stones hitting the surface! Flying fish running for their lives, big head wakes right under them. And when the flyer touched down, boom! I had a couple of really die hard anglers out, Andy and Carlos from Pittsburgh, Pa. for four days. And after some less than cooperative weather and lackluster fishing, these guys really made up for it on Sunday. We fished until the t-storms really got going late in the afternoon. I think they boated better than forty albies between the two of them, with nothing under ten pounds and the big fish of the day being a massive seventeen pounder. That's only a pound off the world record. Yesterday, the albies weren't quite as wild, but it was still fish at will. And we boated an even larger albie which I didn't weight. I was getting worried that the albies weren't going to put in an appearance like normal this year. They are only about a month late showing up in numbers. Hopefully this means they'll be a month late leaving.

6-11-02
We're still getting less than desirable weather, some days I get off the boat, I just want to go find a weatherman and kick his.... "Weather forecasting" is getting to be as big an oxymoron as "jumbo shrimp"... But we've been doing OK, some big dolphin, some very nice albies, a good number of shots at very large tarpon, some very big snook. Have done a few night trips, saw literally a hundred snook each night. Did not get much cooperation at that time, there was very little current and they were not on the feed. The large snook have congregated at area inlets very well, and we boated several nice ones last week. There are more jumbo sized tarpon in the area than I can remember seeing in years. Offshore has been a little lack luster, big dolphin have been the mainstay, kings and albies there also, but not quite in numbers we should have...yet. Had a truly epic battle with a fifteen lb dolphin last Friday. Customer Tim Larkin hooked it up on an eight weight and had quite a fight on his hands for almost an hour. I've rarely seen a dolphin more hell bent on getting away. This one did some nice jumps and couple of short little runs and then sounded and spiraled eighty feet down. Tim stuck with him and eventually got him to the boat. We also had a huge surprise last Thursday with Hunter Johnson, he caught a five pound dolphin. That wasn't the surprise, where he caught it was. Right at the mouth of Palm Beach Inlet!! Swimming right along with the snook and tarpon. I saw several there, so I don't think they were lost.There is still a few blackfin and skipjack tuna around...one evening, I lost a skippie probably the largest I've ever had hooked. Over twenty pounds, I f! ought him about twenty minutes, and lost him to something with teeth. Not sure what ate him, the next one I hooked got chopped in half next to the boat by a monster wahoo. The remains weighed about ten lbs. I'm still seeing sailfish almost everyday, but still haven't made the time to drag teasers for them. That's it in a nutshell.

5-27-02
If we  can just get away from this wind, everything would be great. On the few days the seas layed down enough to get offshore, there has been rapidly increasing false albacore action, big dolphin, a few blackfin and skipjack tuna, sailfish and cobia.... quite a full plate. But, with the passage of not one, but two cold fronts this month,(we normally don't get cold fronts in south FL. during May), the wind has been a-blowin. All these fish have been very close to the inlets, less than a couple miles. But thats a very long couple of miles when the seas are running six to ten feet high. We made it offshore two days last week. On the first day, we found decent numbers of false albacore and did ok, boating approx. six fish in the ten to fourteen pound range. The second day, we started off with an epic battle with some large denizen, probably a tuna, possilbly a amberjack, that the sharks tracked down and killed thirty minutes into the fight. Very annoying. But we almost immediately got into some nice, big dolphin in the twenty pound range, which took away the sting of losing the first fight. Then the wind blew us off the water. That was last tuesday and haven't been offshore since. Tarpon, jacks, cudas and a few snook have been keeping us entertained since. The weather is supposed to moderate this week and we can get back out there. Places to go, fish to annoy...

4-14-02
Don't have alot to tell over the past week or so. At the beginning of the month we had good action on skipjack tuna, nice fish in the five to ten pound range with a few larger fish mixed in. Skippies, as we call them, are great fish. Very fast, I think they're considerably faster than a false albacore, even the little five pounders will dump about a hundred yards on the first run. But they can be very challenging even for accomplished anglers. They are very boat shy, unless you have a ton of chum, they usually insist on a long cast. And they can be very selective, if your fly isn't a dead-on match, they will probably just ignore you. But about a week ago, the wind started in and we've been looking at a very angry ocean. Wave heights were running between five and ten foot, pretty ugly fly fishing conditions. Fishing inside the intracoastal waterway has been a bit slow, but we've managed a few tarpon,(twenty to forty lbs.) and a few jacks,(five to ten lbs.). Today we had five inches of rain fall in just twelve hours, a good bit of rain even for here. The weather is forcasted to moderate somewhat, and we'll be able to get back to work.

4-07-02
Well, looks like the wind has decided to blow for a few days here in S. Fl. As I write this, the wind is a steady twenty two knots with gust over thirty. It had been such a calm winter by our standards, we were overdue for some wind. In the long run, this sort of thing is good. Turns up the water, moves the fish around, and when it finally stops blowing there should be some entertaining stuff to do. Before the weather took a dive at the end of last week, we had been treated to some of the most prolonged skipjack tuna action I had seen in a long time. These speedsters do not usually hang around for more than a day or two. But we had about six days in a row with consistent action on them. A very fast, and boat shy fish, the skippies were crashing piles of sargasso weed, feeding on very small baitfish less than an inch long. Needless to say, flies were the only way to get hooked up. I luckily had a couple of decent casters capable of get a long, fast cast where it needed to be and we managed fish everyday. Average size was six to ten lbs. though I did manage a twelve pounder on an eight weight rod. That particular fish dumped almost two hundred yards of line on the first run...did I mention they were fast? Towards the end of the time the weather would allow us out after them, the skippies became very spooky and even with good casts and dead-on match flies, stopped cooperating. On the last day with them, I saw at least three individual blue marlin harrasing them, and other big boats in the area managed to hook a couple of the marlin. I guess I'd be in a bad mood too if there was ten feet of marlin chasing me around.

3-28-02
How very annoying....I went and dumped a bunch of money on a really nice digital video camera to film the spinner sharks with, and of course, they move out the very next day. And by move out, I mean a mass evacuation. Not a shark left within twenty miles as far as I can tell. Oh well....it was great while it lasted. Can't wait till next year. So, it's on to the other springtime menu of first king mackerel, then dolphin and then the albies. We already have had several good days fishing the kings over the past month, and a couple of dolphin encounters. Both of these should continue to get better over the next month or two, and by mid May the albies should be on the rampage. With water temps already in the high seventies, it'll be interesting to see just how early all this happens. We typically have low seventy degree water at this time, but it's been a warm winter. This, hopefully, will also get the tarpon in a cooperative mood early. So, I guess it's time to start pumping out a bunch of Eatme flies, over the course of the next six months I'll tie over a thousand of them. For anyone interested, the March/April issue of Flyfishing in Saltwater has a very flattering article written about yours truly by Capt. Adam Redford. Also for any local Floridians, or anyone finding themselves in the Ft. Lauderdale area in late April, I'll be one of the guest speakers at the Shallow Water Expo held at the Broward Co. Convention center April 20th and 21st. This is usually a great show with a bunch of good speakers like Lefty Kreh, Flip Pallot, Jose Wejebe, ect. I think I'll have an "End of the Shark Party" party with the other guys who played with them over the past three months....we'll drink a toast and reminisce about the bloody knuckles, cramped up arms, and broken/abused tackle. I think my final totals on the sharks were over five hundred hooked, and over two hundred released...two rods with the stripping guides ripped off them...three broken rods,(none of them mine...anyone looking for an indestructible twelve weight should get one of the 8'6" Redingtons model BWF 86122...if these sharks couldn't break them, nothing can)...five reels in need of the drags being rebuilt...and four fly lines sent off into the deep. Quite a party. PLEASE....anyone who did this with me this year, send any pictures you have of the sharks.

3-15-02
Some very crummy weather last week kept us mostly inside catching jacks and cudas. The jacks for one of the few times this winter were crashing poppers on the surface, and there are few things that'll wallop a popper like a ten to fifteen pound jack. The cudas were mostly small ones less than three feet long, but they can still scoot pretty good. Then on tuesday, some much nicer weather moved in and the jacks moved out to places unknown.  So, Wednesdays trip involved some running around to find something to tug on. We found some very hot king mackerel action, nice sized fish in the ten to twenty pound range. Reminisent of the hot bite in january, we had several hook-ups per drift for several hours. But that afternoon, the sharks warmed up to a decent frenzy, hooking about a dozen.  I thought that was good, but it didn't come close to what happened yesterday.  Every shark fly, and everything that looked like a shark fly was destroyed in a matter of hours. I don't know how many sharks we hooked, but it was one of the top five days on the spinners I've ever had. We were being engulfed by massive clouds of them, schools of sharks over a hundred strong.  With almost flat calm conditions and crystal clear water, I would have given anything for a video camera.  The show was incredible. Beat the customer to such a frazzle, he had to back out of his second day...."my arms couldn't take another day like this....".

2-11-02
Some very entertaining stuff happening over the past month. Fishing has been pretty damn good, with just enough slow days to make the good days oh, so sweet. And I've been lucky to have had some great people to do it all with. Had Andy Bayne and his fishing buddy Carlos from Pittsburgh, Pa. out in the middle of January during some very un-seasonal warm/calm summer-like weather. The jacks were good, fish in the five to twelve pound range cooperating well almost anytime we wanted. But the majority of the four days we fished were spent on the spinner sharks. I didn't keep accurate totals, but I think they hooked upwards of thirty sharks, boating nine. The sharks had chosen a particular stretch of beach near a good number of condo's to hang out, and they restricted their patrol routes to less than fifty feet off the beach. Needless to say, there were very few bathers in the water. I'm sure anyone living in those condo's were well aware of the "big, brown fish" in close to the beach. We saw several sharks passing between bathers and dry sand less than twenty feet away.   So, we set up and brought the sharks in on the chum trail and proceded to hook them up, sending them jumping and running in all directions. This would immediately draw quite a crowd.  And when we released a shark, we would get a resounding cheer from the "gallery". It still amazes me the number of times someone from the beach would yell out" What kind of fish is that?" Yelling back "Shark!" would get some pretty funny looks. Also during that time we were treated to a very early season king mackerel blitz. Late February through April is the typical time for kings here, I can't remember a January run of the line- dumpers, and we hooked fish on almost every drift through the fleet. And a serious fleet of boats it was sitting on top of this large school of king mackerel. Close to a hundred boats were in on this party, commercial king boats, charter boats, and with it being a weekend, huge numbers of "weekend warriors". And the sweetest thing of all was having the other boats just drop-jawed shocked to see fly rods doubled over with one, two and once a triple header at almost all times while their livebaits were going untouched. I think they're still scratching their heads over that one. The kings moved on pretty soon after that, but the jacks and sharks have stayed and intersperced with some tarpon, some night-time snook, a few magnum sized cudas, continue to be the menu for the forseeable future.  We've crossed the thousand fish mark on jacks this winter, and I'm not certain on the number of sharks hooked, but judging from the number of shark flies I've tied, it must be close to two hundred and fifty, boating less than thirty pecent of those. False albacore have already started to make an appearance, about as early as I've ever heard of. I hear the dolphin in the keys have started to pick up, which means their imminent arrival here. And an impressive number of wahoo have been reported offshore. Just a few things to look forward to.

01-06-02
A rapid procession of cold fronts have really heated up the fishing here. Some very entertaining stuff, if I do say so myself. The tarpon played nicely this week, we boated several, the largest being just short of fifty pounds. Baracuda also put on quite a showing, they've started hanging in warm water areas, and sight casting to pods of as many as twenty, three to five foot long cudas has produced some great sport. The schools of jack crevalle just keep getting bigger and bigger. Most of the jacks are running four to ten pounds and are great nine weight fare, though there are occaisional encounters with jacks over twenty pounds. A deep drifted "eatme" streamer fly gets smacked pretty fast, but they've been shy of hitting anything on the surface for some reason. Normally, poppers and surface flies like sliders, crease flies and fur-head mullet imitations get a good deal of attention, and the resulting surface strikes are spectacular. I'm sure they'll get around to it sometime soon. The ladyfish are also enjoying the co