My best friend Marc who fishes 160+ days a year went on vacation to SouthernRI for a fishing extravaganza this past Saturday. So I decided to take a ridedown and fish with him Sunday to pull an all nighter for stripers and Mondaymorning first light for the bonito and albacore with the fly rod. When wefish together we fish hard, moving from one spot to the next until we findthe fish and are hooking up consistently.This time of the year it can be hit or miss from one location to another,but once you find the fish and what they are hitting you better have yourgame face on, because you may catch a schoolie striper one cast then a 40+pounder on the next. This past Sunday night was no exception!!!We started fishing Narragansett at 8:30pm. The tide was just starting to goout, there was bait everywhere, and Marc caught a 20lbs striper on the firstcast. It didn’t take long for me to hook up but I only got into a 25 inchfish. After fishing 45 or so minutes I finally land a striper we areguessing to be 30+ lbs, it was BIG. Well after one more cast I reel in, onlyto reel in too far and too fast and catch the swivel in the top guide of myrod, breaking the guide. (Anyone who has fished with me knows I always taketop guides as well as an extra rod everywhere I go.) But do you think I takeone this night… NO….NO extra rod, NO extra guides. GREAT!! Now I amsitting on the beach with a broken rod, the tide is perfect, there is a tonof bait and BIG stripers are everywhere. Marc had to hold back from laughingout loud a few times as he heard me cursing to the fish gods on the beach.(I can laugh about it now, but it was not funny then).I told Marc I would hang around on the beach until he was ready to head out,but he insisted we go back and grab extra rods for the evening was stillyoung. We stopped and picked up 6 extra rods, we were not going to be heldup from fishing for the rest of the night, no matter what happens.40 minutes later we are scavenging the beaches looking for more stripers butseemed all we could find were bluefish that liked to eat $20 Habs needlefishfor dinner. Once we each lost one to the blues we went spot to spot never toget into the stripers again. I believe we cursed ourselves when we left thebig stripers to get more rods, and made the mistake not to go back for them,but who knew.First light came and it was off to try for the bonito and ‘albies’ off therock jetties. We got there a little late due to the line at Duncan Donuts,as we are walking out it is so foggy you can hardly see 100 feet in front ofyou, but we make it to the first bend and there is a guy fighting an ‘albie’with his fly rod, walk to the second guy and he is on too. We find our rocksand start fishing, within 10 minutes Marc is on, the guy to my right andleft are on and I can not cast due to flylines being every which way infront of me. So I take a seat and watch the fun, and it is fun watchingthese guys. They are all hooting and hollering like they just won a milliondollars. The lines clear and I finally get to fish, only problem is thereare no fish around now. We fished another hour and none of the 20+ flyfisherman are hooking up.I make one call to my friend who owns a tackle shop in the area, and ask ifthe fish have been in ‘Quanny’ Breachway. He states the fish have been thereevery day, on every tide, so off we went again to another spot in search ofthe fast and elusive ‘Albie’. We get to the breachway and it is FULL ofmullet, I grab my rod take 2 casts and see a school of ‘albies’ runningright to me. I make a horrible 20 foot cast but far enough ahead of them notto screw it up and ‘BANG’ fish on. I set the hook and this fish ripped offall my fly line and right into the backing before I could tell Marc I washooked up. I finally landed the fish with some help, snapped a picture andreleased the fish. Marc was going back to where he left his rod, but beforehe got there I was yelling to him I had another one on and to come give me ahand. At this point I realized I had a crowd of 9 fisherman that werefishing the breachway behind me trying to figure out what I was using forbait and what I had on. Ten minutes later and smiling ear to ear I landedthe ‘albie’ snapped another picture, and back in the water it went. I was sotired from being up all night I sat on the rocks and talked with some of thelocal fisherman I have met through out the years fishing the area not eventhinking of putting my line back in the water. Marc took a few more castsand we called it a morning…. Back to take a nap and drive home to cookdinner for the wife…….