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secret that winter in Maine is long. Perhaps it was the anticlimactic
fall spent away from the ocean. Maybe it was just that my first winter
at college was taking a toll. Whatever the reason, I got a serious case
of the shack nasties right about the middle of January. There was only
one solution: a trip to warmer climes.
I already knew I would be spending part of my long anticipated spring break snowshoeing the beautiful, albeit chilly, Green Mountains of Vermont. I didn’t want to spend the rest of it in equally fishless Massachusetts. So I started trying to persuade my father that we should take a little fishing trip. After a few weeks of planning we settled on West Palm Beach. It met all our requirements: it was close to an airport with cheap airfare, there was available and affordable lodging and it had fish. One of the major factors in our decision was the fact that West Palm would present us with fishing options we hadn’t experienced before. When I booked Capt. Scott Hamilton for three days, I had no idea just how different our experience in West Palm would be. We arrived in West Palm early Saturday afternoon on March 16th and met up with my great uncle who lives outside Tampa. We had some time to kill, so we drove down to the IGFA museum in Fort Lauderdale. We spent an hour or so perusing the galleries of old tackle and the many other exhibits. Virtual fishing games provided a humorous tune-up for the days to follow. The highlight of the trip was a Curt Gowdy video of Terry Bradshaw tarpon fishing. We met Capt. Scott the next morning at 7:00. Once introductions had been made we motored out to a spot just inside the inlet where Capt. Scott gave us an informal casting lesson. Once we had rigged up we headed out of the inlet. A short boat ride brought us to a wreck and a school of bar jacks.We each caught a few which were tossed in the fish box. After each of us had caught at least one we ran along the beach and found a massive school of rat bluefish. They were easy to catch, and we released several of those into the fish box as well. By now I was totally befuddled. My confusion only grew worse when Capt. Scott asked me if I was feeling manly. I could only reply "Yeah, sure," but truth be told, I had absolutely no clue where we were going next as he started the motor.
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We ran down the
beach towards the easily recognizable West Palm condo towers. We
anchored about 500 yards off the beach and then the fun began. Capt.
Scott tied a few bar jacks and bluefish together,  slashed
their sides and hung them in the water. Now I knew what was going on.
Scott pulled a twelve weight from the rod rack, and rigged it with a
wire leader and big orange fly  with
a popper head. He shook about twenty feet of line out of the guides,
drifted the fly back in the blood trail and handed me the rod. It wasn’t
long before the first shark showed up. They came in hot, excitedly
searching for the source of the scent. When they found the fly, they
turned and sipped it like a trout taking a mayfly. What followed,
however, was entirely un-troutlike. All of the fish we hooked that day
began with a 200 or so yard run into the backing. After that, the battle
generally tended to shift towards a down and dirty brawl, with the fifty
to eighty pound sharks bulldogging in slow, stubborn circles around the
boat. Eventually, they would tire and Capt. Scott would carefully pop
the hook out using a pole and ring contraption.
All three of us landed sharks that day before
the boat traffic simply got too bad and the sharks shut off for the day.
That night each one of us joked about dreaming of sharks. I know I had
an indelible image of the shark snout clamping down on the fly that ran
through my mind until seven the next morning.
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Monday brought equally beautiful weather and much fewer boats. We took advantage of the good weather and headed offshore into the Gulf Stream, looking for whatever we could find. After only about twenty or so minutes we practically ran into a floating tire. The tire was absolutely loaded with hungry Mahi Mahi. Almost every cast brought brilliant flashes of stunning color as the excited fish charged our flies. My father and I were awed by the speed, strength and jumps of the schoolie dolphin, but I think we were most impressed by their indescribable beauty. We kept several fish so that we could savor one last quality of these amazing fish. The tire was good to us, but the dolphin began to shut off and we decided to look for another floater. As it turned out, luck was playing tricks with us. We never found another object that had a school of fish on it despite spending a couple of hours searching. This was my first trip into bluewater, and I was overwhelmed by the inexpressible color of the water. My great uncle’s description of "bluer than blue" came close, but nothing had prepared me for its reality.
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The day wore on, and since dolphin seemed nowhere in sight, we headed in to the Marina, where Capt. Scott cleaned the fish, tossing scraps to the school of massive jacks that lived under the piers. When the fish were cleaned we took the carcasses and headed out to the beach. This time, we were ready, and our mouths watered with anticipation. I took the first shot, this time with a slow sinking fly rather than a popper. After seven minutes the first shark showed, coming in from a hundred yards out like a "brown missile." When it saw my fly it unloaded all that energy, then bolted, tearing off 150 yards of backing. I landed that fish after a long, stubborn fight at the boat, and against my better judgment, went back to do it again. The next shark was just as hot, but instead ran a hundred yards farther than the first fish. I jokingly complained as I worked to land that fish, my forearms burning in delightful agony. When Capt. Scott popped the hook out, I collapsed on the cooler and ate a sandwich, and watched the mayhem in the back of the boat. My great uncle was trying out a new rod and reel, and he was having no trouble hooking the aggressive sharks, but couldn’t keep them on the line past the first run. Eventually he quit, and I took another turn. It didn’t take long before another shark was hooked up. Once I had my flyline back inside the tiptop, Capt. Scott handed my father a rod, and he connected as well. It was quite the spectacle as we worked our lines around each other, his shark always going clockwise while mine went counter. After several hours of phenomenal fishing, that according to Scott was a ten out of ten on the shark scale, we headed back to the dock. The day’s surprises weren’t over though. We took our Mahi Mahi fillets to a local restaurant where, for only six bucks, we had them blackened, grilled and fried. It was hands down the best fish I’ve ever had. It was a perfect end to a perfect day, sitting on the porch of the restaurant next to the water. The trip could have ended well that evening and we would have gone home happy. That’s probably why the next day had the feeling of an anticlimax. We started a little later, since boat traffic wasn’t a problem, and headed out to the reef to fish for kings. I’ve heard king mackerel are a lot of fun once you get them hooked, but we didn’t hook any, and sitting in the boat with 80 feet of fast sinking line below you didn’t really come close to the adrenaline rush of sharks or the visual thrills of dolphin. After an hour of nothing a school of dolphin shot by the boat, but we couldn’t hook one up. The slow king fishing and the appearance of dolphin sent us off on another Gulf Stream hunt, but like the previous morning, we were out of luck. With half the day gone, we decided to go back to reliability, and headed to a wreck to catch some shark food. This time it was baby false albacore that we tossed in the fish box before heading to the beach. |
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Our first spot was a dud, and so we moved farther out on the bar. I hooked a pair of sharks that finally showed us their other fighting attribute: jumping. The sharks we were fishing for were Spinner Sharks (also called American Longnose Sharks) and they were seasonal inhabitants of the West Palm area. They live close to the beach, feeding on small minnows, and are present in the hundreds of thousands. Although not a serious threat to humans, Capt. Scott said there have been occasional bites. They can often be seen jumping along the beach, leaping headfirst and spinning like a figure skater. Scott told us that they would do the same at the end of a fly line, but we had yet to see it. The first fish shark I hooked up that
afternoon went ballistic, jumping three times in fifteen seconds, and
running in such a circular fashion that my line was nowhere near taught.
Eventually the fish broke off after the third spinning jump, its
abrasive skin having cut through the fifty pound leaders Scott used. A
second shark also put on a jumping routine before breaking off. After
that bad luck ruled, and I was unable to hook up on any more sharks.
They were simply not as aggressive or hungry, and part of the answer why
came when a ten foot hammerhead shark showed up in the slick.
Hammerheads and Bull Sharks are the natural predators of the Spinners,
and it was pretty clear that the fishing just wasn’t going to be the
same. We moved closer to shore and got one last shot at a fish before we
had to return to the dock and to home. When I returned to school five days after the trip, spring had already started to arrive. The air had taken on a new feel, and temperatures were rising. Just yesterday, trout season opened. Capt. Scott told us a story about a Montana trout guide who in one day caught sharks, dolphin, tuna and a thirty pound jack. Scott said to him "I’ve ruined the rest of your life now." The guide replied, "What do you mean? This is the best day fishing I’ve ever had!" Scott answered, "That’s my point. Trout will never be the same." I don’t know how I’ll ever go back. I don’t know that I want to. |
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I guess I don’t need to give Capt. Scott much more of an endorsement than this article. He was a lot of fun to fish with, knew where to find fish and guided as hard as we fished. You can contact him through his website, www.flyfishingextremes.com |
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The disappointing last day had
been emotionally draining, but recuperating at home a few days later
thoughts of sharks kept racing through my mind. My cabin fever was cured
for that winter.