A local boat stops at a shoal buoy for bait. Mate checks a mullet dredge, below.

Early one morning last December, Capt. Glenn Cameron spotted the kind of fish-finding sign that sailfish skippers love to see: a flock of two dozen birds diving on the horizon. What he saw next made him check his loran and GPS.

Cameron, owner and operator of the Fort Pierce charterboat Floridian, thought he might have been magically transported to the springtime waters off the Yucatan Peninsula. After all, the sight of so many hungry sailfish feeding on so much bait on the surface was not exactly common along the east coast of Florida in recent years.

But in the coming weeks, Cameron and other sailfish enthusiasts would see sailfish release numbers pile up like perhaps no other time in history. Action this hot had been reserved for exotic locales like Cancun, Guatemala and Costa Rica. But the daily dose of home-cooked double-digit releases had many a spindlebeak fan booking trips in Sailfish Alley, instead of a springtime foray to Central America.

After the last triangular red release flag was stowed for the next season, anglers, crew, observers and experts were all left wondering what caused it, and more importantly, will it happen again?

The Best Ever?

Charter captains and tournament organizers from St. Lucie, Martin and Palm Beach counties racked up record release numbers between December 2003 and February 2004. The season seemed to peak during a span of 12 days in January when four sailfish tournaments fishing from Fort Pierce, St. Lucie and Palm Beach inlets hosted over 500 anglers aboard 149 boats. Their combined efforts yielded an incredible 1,536 sailfish releases. One event employed live bait with mandatory circle hooks while the remaining three used trolled dead baits only.

During the same period, non-tournament boats from Sebastian south to Boynton Inlet capitalized on the bite. Aggressive spindlebeak activity was reported in as shallow as 40 feet of water in some spots and as deep as 300 feet.

“It was really something to see,” recalled John Jolley, president of the West Palm Beach Fishing Club and retired state fisheries scientist. “You could literally watch sailfish finning on the surface for hours as they fed on schools of sardines. It reminded me of what you see with those sails on the Pacific side of Costa Rica.”

Jolley fished his club’s Silver Sailfish Derby January 8-10 and was most amazed on Jan. 9. That was the Derby’s all-time greatest day, with 373 releases by 59 fishing teams live baiting with circle hooks. Chip Sheehan’s crew aboard Cookie set a Derby record of 30 releases that day, trailed slightly by the 25 scored by Capt. Ray Rosher’s Get Lit.

“I’ll never forget what it looked like,” said Glenn Cameron, who has been in the offshore charter business for 30 years in Sebastian and Fort Pierce. “You’d see birds picking, fish cutting, then fish biting.”

On the day of the record Derby bite, Cameron was fishing the Pelican Yacht Club of Fort Pierce Invitational Billfish Tournament. In 180 to 200 feet of water east of Vero Beach, Cameron’s anglers Hans Kraaz and Reid Macy sent up a respectable tournament-record 14 release flags by day’s end. Their tally was matched by Frank and Mike Murray, and Chris Hodge aboard Capt. Cookie Murray’s Cookie Too. The Pelican fleet of 53 boats recorded 203 releases while trolling that day.

Over the same three days of action, Jan. 8 to 10, the two tournament fleets covered an area that stretched from Sebastian to the north to Palm Beach Inlet to the south. In all, 112 fishing teams pinned 1,022 release flags to outriggers. Most of the Palm Beach boats fished between St. Lucie and Jupiter inlets while most of the Fort Pierce boats fished between Fort Pierce and Sebastian inlets.

A week later, two smaller events out of Fort Pierce and St. Lucie inlets had a combined total of 35 boats enjoy 514 releases in three days, all while trolling. These numbers only reflect actual releases, and do not account for many more fish that were hooked up and came unglued. Nor do they account for the sheer, unfathomable numbers of fish seen in the bait spreads.