Sure, I agree with you that big booms are the best strat, at least on water maps. But look at some of the statements you made here: You had an enormous fishing fleet. An enemy with any degree of competence would have started pumping scout ships right away and attacked that. He would have easily understood you were dock booming from the Achievements screen. Now, you stated that your Tool was delayed for about 5 minutes. Assuming that's a 5 minute delay compared to your enemy, a good enemy would be able to make at least one scout ship every 30 seconds and send them towards you, while tooling and bronzing himself. Thus, by the time you make it even to tool, you face the prospect of an enemy who has 10+ scout ships/war galleys wrecking your fishing fleet before you are even able to make ONE yourself. Needless to say, this would screw up your fishing operation big time. This would eventually dry out your supply of fish, right? This means that you will have less food, you have to puts lots of villies on wood in order to regain the upper hand at sea, which means they will be producing less food. Now, 2000+ food is certainly enough to both Bronze and Iron (you need gold too, but never mind that). If you don't fight back at sea, your area will be severly reduced, and your enemy will be able to land a transport in your area anytime, with naval support included. If you fight back at sea, you will be using wood you sorely need for buildings and possibly farms, which means less production and less military. But then again, you can always make axemen and slingers from all your barracks, eh? Also, if the enemy is able to bronze before you tool, you're in deep DOH, as your early tool army will likely be slaughtered by a Bronze army. Assuming you decide to slug it out at sea, you will probably be unable to get the resources required to go to Iron and get any superunits at all. If you don't slug it out, you will have to defend yourself and wall off the beach, which will cost even more resources. And if the enemy is able to get even 4-5 decent Bronze units into your town before you Bronze, you will be in for a heckuva ride unless you build a major Tool army, which will probably delay your Iron time and give the enemy time to attack harder himself.
Another factor also comes into play: Once an enemy goes Tool, he can get Market Techs to improve villager productivity. Think about it this way: 5 Woodworking villies = 6 Non-upgraded. This means that even if the enemy has fewer villagers than you, he may still be pouring the resources in at least as good as you, especially considering the fact that he will still be free to build fishing boats and even ships, while you won't. So the rusher might quickly outboom the boomer, if you boom too hard. A difference in time of 5 minutes is horrible, in fact. Traditionally, the rusher has a small window of opportunity to take care a boomer before he loses for sure. With those five minutes, that window becomes more like a panorama window than anything else. If he's able to start putting the squeeze on you, then you'll actually be fighting for your life for the rest of the game, or at least until you can stabilize the situation, which you probably won't be able to do.
Now, I'm not in any way opposed to booms; they're the best general strat around. You should, however, try to do this mostly in team games, where an ally might be able to take the pressure of you and let you boom in peace. One on one it probably won't work at all. And in a FFA it may work ... if you can stay out of your opponents' way. The best way to accomplish this would of course be to make yourself hard to run into (that is, wall in a small area, not half the map, this will be pure provocation to all involved, and will likely get you in a heap of trouble). Spreading out is always a good idea, but in a FFA, you're quite likely to get involved in a multi-front war, and the likelihood increases with the size of your territory. Don't take "other people's territory" until you are sure you are able to hold it.
Just one last thing: If you had all that food laying around, you should have tooled sooner, as it will do you no good in Stone once you have a decent villager count, and you will still be able to make fishing boats while you tool. Try to Bronze jump and Bronze Boom instead of having a monstrously slow tool. Slow Tools can work out fine in team games; in other games, it's an invitation to attack. It doesn't matter how big your economy is if you're constantly defending yourself. Slow tools should be no more than 2-3 minutes behind the opponent; you don't won't to fall two ages behind your opponent. An Iron Jump does you no good if you can't defend yourself, which may likely be the case if you Tool and Bronze 5 minutes after your opponent. I assume this is what you did, based on the text in your post.
I am still of the opinion that Booms are better than Rushes (of course!), as long as you don't overdo it.