11/23/2007 Palm Beach Florida

It sure is nice to go home and be with family for Thanksgiving. I am fortunate enough to have parents that still live in Palm Beach..One of the best Sailfishing grounds on the east coast. We made it down there on Wednesday and after unpacking the truck spent some time working on Mark's Boat. Mark is one of my buddies from way back in middle school who I have kept in touch with and fished with for over 30 years now. We always have a great time. We got the boat working right (22 Foot Edgewater) and planned on leaving Friday morning at the ungodly hour of 7AM. Now mind you, that is still considered an early start by palm beach standards.We pulled out of my Dad's canal into the intracoastal waters to 72 Degree sunny morning. we decided to buy a dozen Goggle Eye...the preferred bait for sails down in Palm beach. So loaded up with some fresh live bait we made out way out of Lake worth inlet past the old Pumphouse where as kids we often skipped school and went surfing amongst other things I really don't want to get into...lol...The ocean was flat as could be and the sun was shining just as I remembered as a kid fishing out of there on my Dad's old riveria and many other boats later in life. We decided to put our baits out inn 100 Feet just off the breakers, with Palm Beach Island and the Kennedy compound as the backdrop we really couldn't ask for much more. about 10 minutes after we got our lines in the baits start freaking out...ok this is it....tighten up on the drag and bam..slack line...pull em both in and both have been lazered by something toothy, probably Kingfish !..this happened many times before Mark finally said screw this and made a couple of 1 Foot wire leaders and put the remaining few goggle eyes out....My fish starts doing the oh shit dance and I see a bill slashing my bait...I freespool the TLD25 and hook up with a really healthy sail..mark is feeding his fish also and comes tight but the fish Mark had on threw the hook. This sail is pulling drag pretty steadily so we decide chase her down. A couple of jumps and about 20minutes later she's boatside and I hand the rod to mark while I bill the fish to get a few shots. we spend about 10 minutes reviving the fish and she kicked a couple of times and waiver her sail at us as she swam off back into the blue looking for the next meal.The winds had shifted and kicked up to the NW at about 15 - 20 so we decided to float one more time before calling it a day. one more sail piles on our bait and is hooked up, this fish jumps and is the smallest sailfish I have ever seen. Probably not much bigger than a small gaffer dolphin but just beautiful...Well he spit the hook also.... Had a wonderful time but the wife and both kids had come down with a bad cold so we decided not to fish on Saturday so I could get them both home so they could recover.....as always I had a blast seeing family and friends back home. I