The sailfish bite is red hot off the coast of Fort Lauderdale.  Every day this week we’ve caught multiple sailfish with a few days catching 8 or 9 in a single trip.  It’s been easy fishing too, just go out the reef, throw out a few live baits, wait a few minutes and whammo!  Sailfish On!   The extra cool winter this year has really got them feeding.  All the sailfish we’re catching now are between 7-8 feet in length, and some really fat fish this year too.  I don’t know how long the sailfish snap is going to last, but let’s enjoy it while we can.

Great action on the reef with some other species too.  Kingfish are biting fairly well while trolling the reef.  They can be hard to find some days, but if you troll long enough, you should hit a school of them and load up.  There are some smoker kings out there to be caught this time of year.  And whenever trolling the reef, you can also hit tuna, mahi-mahi and wahoo.  There haven’t been a lot of them caught, but some monster wahoos hit the dock this week.  A couple of them over 50 pounds which is huge for Fort Lauderdale. 

There are some fish showing up around the wrecks this time of year.  Groupers are biting but most groupers are restricted this season and are catch and release.  There have been some monster amberjacks caught dropping live bonitos down to the bottom.  Amberjacks should start showing up strong around the wrecks within the next few weeks for their big February-March migration.  We’ve caught a few big toothy critters lately that have been inhabiting the wrecks;  barracuda and a couple huge bull sharks.  The predatory fish are begining to show up. 

There’s some excellent fishing out there these days off Ft Lauderdale.  The next few weeks of fishing should continue strong and lead us into the spring fishing season.  Sea ya on the water.     

 Sailfish, kingfish and tuna…  Oh My!  The fishing is very good this holiday season here in Fort Lauderdale, with quite a bit of kingfish action showing up on the reef.  The morning and afternoon drift boats are catching kingfish, snappers, some blackfin tuna and the odd-ball grouper or cobia.  The night anchor fishing for snappers is really good this month too.  Yellowtails, mangrove and mutton snappers are snappin’ on the night trips.  A few groupers are being caught at night too, red grouper, blacks and scamps.   

 The big game sportfishing trips are catching some big ones out there too.  We’re smack dab in the middle of sailfish season here in South Florida and the bite is on.  Winter is always the time to go after sailfish and the conditions lately have been the best; light wind and cool temperatures.  We catch most of our sailfish kite fishing, where we present our baits by suspending them from kites.  It’s a fun way to fish because when the sailfish comes up take the bait, you get to watch all the action right on the top of the water.  It’s pretty awesome watching sailfish chasing a live bait around on the surface.
Sailfish aren’t the only fish out there this season.  The deep shipwrecks are holding big grouper, amberjack and cobia.  Spring is the all around best season for wreck fishing in Fort Lauderdale, but we always like to give wreck fishing a few minutes each trip.  You never know what you might catch dropping baits that deep.   

 We also caught couple of huge wahoo this week on the troll.  Wahoo normally average around 15-20 pounds, but a few of the ones we’ve caught lately peaked the scales at over 50 pounds.  That’s a smoker wahoo.  Winter fishing is going great.  Sea you on the water everyone.

-Capt. Andy

 The Wednesday all day dolphin trip was red hot this week.  Captain Stu began trolling offshore, looking for a weedline or something else nice to fish to.  High up and off in the distance, we spotted a frigate bird circling and trolled towards it to investigate.  When we came closer, another frigate bird came into view circling the same area, flying low to the water.  As we trolled close, we got an immediate bite on the short bait, a nice dolphin.  Capt. Stu slowed the boat down and we fought the fish.  As we got the dolphin close to the boat, we could see a couple more were following.  A couple fishermen quickly threw out pitch baits.  The following dolphin ate the pitch baits at once.  We landed all 3 of those, plus caught another as we trolled near the birds again.  All 4 dolphin were 7-8 pounds a piece. 

The next hour of the trip was relatively uneventful.  We trolled along, had a few mystery bites, but no other fish for a while.  The mate onboard, Josh, caught sight of a floating piece of wood.  Captain Stu set the boat up on a drift near the log.  As soon as we threw the first bait in the water, we could see a couple dolphin fish swim over towards us from underneath the log.  We caught the first few right away and picked at them for about 30 minutes, ending up with 10 more dolphin from that school.  When we stopped getting bites, we set back up on the troll, heading south along a nicely formed weedline. 

We trolled along the weedline for a while with no bites.  We were a pretty good ways offshore, so we changed course and began heading in the distance toward the inlet.  It was about a half hour of nothing when suddenly every line we had out slammed down hard.  With 8 dolphin jumping behind the boat, things got chaotic for a few minutes.  Captain Stu could see from his lookout in the wheelhouse that there were dolphin swimming everywhere around the boat.  He shut down the engines and yelled to everyone to cast out their pitch baits.  Dolphins were around the boat jumping, the ones we just caught were flopping on the deck, it was awesome.  Josh, our mate, rigged everyone up with bailing rigs so we could catch them quicker. 

We fished on that same drift for over an hour, catching dolphin literally non-stop.  The waters around the boat were swarming with streaks of yellow and turquoise as dolphin frenzied and circled the boat.  Ones that looked a little small or just barely legal size, we just threw back without measuring.  There were so many fish in the boat, everyone on board had caught MANY.  Captain Stu looked into the fish box and said, “We gotta stop fishing for a minute and get a count on these fish.”  Josh pulled the dolphin out of the fish box, one by one and counted them up.  The final count came up at 57 dolphin already boated.  The limit per vessel is 60, so we caught 3 more quick dolphin and started up the engines to go home.  As we were leaving the area, Captain Stu said it looked like there were 400 dolphin still in the water.  We couldn’t keep anymore and it was late in the day so we headed for home. 

Since we were headed right past in on the way home, Captain Stu stopped at his favorite snapper hole for one drift.  We caught about a dozen vermillion snapper, icing on the cake for a stupendous deep sea fishing adventure.  Thanks to all that came and I’m glad you got to experience the awesome rush of finding a gold mine of dolphin offshore.  I hope next week is just as good.  Sea ya on the water. 

 The Friday Night Swordfishing trip was successful this past Friday Night, bringing in a 130 pound swordfish.  Doug Eilertson was the lucky angler who hooked into this fish.  He emailed me his fishing report yesterday with some photos of the fish which I will post below.  Thanks for the pictures Doug and great job on catching a big swordfish. 

To Captain Andy and Doug Eilertson’s Friends,

The pictures attached are proof! I finally got a keeper sword after six trips. During those night-trips… On my first run I caught my first swordfish–a throw back that was 1/4 inch undersized,then I got 2 dophin fish, next trip someone else got a keeper sword so we got to taste victory, after that my strong bite turned out to be a 6′ shark and the trip before this, someone had a nice swordfish break-off at the boat.

 Here are the details of my recent successful trip:

I caught the swordfish stand-up with no fighting chair. The fish hit my squid 200ft down Illuminated with a solid green light.)while I was using a Penn Int’l rod with a 50-wide reel–I fished it as a Tip Rod near the stern.

The fish took a long run but I brought it in solo in 25 minutes.

The fight ended on Oct 3 at 2:00am– 20 miles off Sunrise Blvd–Ft Lauderdale in 2000 feet of water. My catch was; 97.5″ overall, Body length 57.5″, Girth 32″.  We thought it was 120-130lbs but we had no scale. It was all the two mates each with a gaff could do to to bring it onboard through the tuna-door. The fish was thrashing with its tail and razor sharp sword going back and forth.

It was a perfectly executed effort by all on the boat to clear rods and support my effort. My special thanks to the Captain– He let us stay out a little longer to try to get us a fish. As it turned out, I had the only hooked fish that night although a couple other baits had been slashed by swords.(Swords do that before biting.)By the time we took pictures and cleaned the fish it was 5:00am. Since I had driven down to Florida non-stop to make the fishing boat’s 6pm departure, I was up 48 hours straight before I got to bed!

The next day I enjoyed some fresh swordfish steak and relaxed in the hot tub at the Lighthouse Cove Resort in Pompano Beach!

Keep in touch and let me know what you have been doing!

Doug

 The deep sea fishing action has been excellent for the Fort Lauderdale fishing boats.  Lots of kingfish are making it easy to catch everyone a fish or 2.  The kingfish this time of year average 4-10 pounds, but the occassional Autumn kingfish can sometimes be 20 pounds or bigger.  The reef has been holding a lot of kingfish, but these months also offer some other big fish on the reef.  Blackfin tuna are a great fighting fish that we catch trolling and drifting the reef this time of year.  Wahoo too are around and can be caught fishing the reef.  We usually catch a wahoo whenever you least expect it and they are an exhillarating catch.  Barracuda, schoolie mahi-mahi and snappers/groupers are also biting good this season and can add great variety to the catch. 

Our drift fishing boat has been doing well drifting the reef in 80′-140′ of water.  Lots of kingfish along with some bonitos have made up the majority of our catches lately.  Those fishermen fishing the bottom are hooking into yellowtail snapper, red grouper and some very nice sized Mutton snapper.  The night anchor trips, which target snapper specifically, are coming in with solid numbers on yellowtails, along with nice mangrove snappers and some larger mutton snappers.  A few groupers at night, but most of our groupers lately have been caught on the day trips. 

Our sportfishing boats have really been shining lately.  Sailfish season is upon us and they have already begun to make their presence known.  Kite fishing has been very effective for sailfish this week with a couple trips catching multiples.  Sailfish are the most sought after gamefish in the ocean and sportfishing Fort Lauderdale from September to January is about as good as it gets for us.  Big game sharks are biting fiercly out in the deep, on the 350′ dropoff which is about 2 miles off our coast.  Some big hammerhead sharks, bull sharks and spinner sharks have been caught aboard the Big Game and the Out of the Blue these past couple weeks.  Offshore fishing for mahi-mahi has been productive too.  The summer months were relatively slow for us on mahi-mahi, but just as last year, the mahi-mahi have finally showed up late and are beginning to bite strong.  Lastly, the wreck fishing for grouper has been very good for us.  Both shallow water and deep water groupers are hitting live baits dropped around shipwrecks.  Amberjacks are also biting good around the deeper shipwrecks. 

The Autumn fishing season is always good for us in South Florida.  There is a good variety of fish around and with some good tactics and a bit of luck, you can have a great fishing day.  The weather for us has been beautiful and is starting to cool down.  I look forward to our beautiful 75 degree weather coming soon and some awesome fishing stories to share.  Sea you on the water.

Action on the reefs has been hot with lots of bonitos and kingfish biting.  Bonitos are still biting in full force, but we should be nearing the end of their migration, so we may only have another couple weeks of good bonito fishing.  Kingfish on the other hand, generally bite well for us in late August and September.  The kings have been biting alongside the bonitos, same depths of water and the same baits.  Drift fishing has been very productive lately.  Most of our trips have been action packed with some really nice fish coming over the side.  Kingfish have been averaging in the 4-10 pound range, with a few bigger kingfish here and there.  Our day time drift fishing trips are also catching some nice yellowtail snappers.  Yellowtail snappers have been biting very well for us during the day drift trips as well as our night anchor trips.  Yellowtails have been nice sized ones too, most of them being at least 2 pounds.

The drift fishing has been great, but the sportfishing has been where we’re catching the really big game fish.  This summer has been excellent season for us for catching hammerhead sharks, sailfish, smoker big wahoo, and big jacks and cudas.  Kite fishing on the days when we have enough wind has been effective for the summer sailfish bite.  Winter has traditionally always been the best time of year to catch sailfish, but sailfish are one of those species where there’s always a few of them around.  Sharks too, are year round feeders off the Fort Lauderdale coast, and although spring is high season for sharks, there’s always a few big game sharks swimming off our coast.   

Wrecks have been holding some really big fish lately too.  Big amberjacks are hanging thick on deep shipwrecks.  Occasionally, you’ll get really lucky with a black, gag or warsaw grouper.  On the shallow wrecks, we’ve been pulling live baits around using downriggers and catching some giant barracuda.  Also around the shallow wrecks this time of year are mutton snappers and the odd-ball cobia.  Wreck hopping, a tactic we use of dropping a quick bait on a wreck, waiting a few minutes and moving to another wreck, has been a great fishing technique for catching some quick monster sized fish.  The great thing about fishing this way, is that you either get the bite right away, or you’re moving to another spot where the fish are hopefully a bit more aggressive.  You usually don’t have to dangle a live bonito or blue runner for very long around a wreck to get a bite. 

Dolphin fishing offshore has continued to be very hit or miss.  We’ve gone out on a few dolphin trips lately, with varying results.  A couple trips were very successful for us, when we found a school of schoolie dolphins, or found a big board or log floating, which was loaded with fish.  A couple other trips offshore were completely dead with literally nothing biting out there.  The dolphins have definitely NOT made their summer run down the coast this year yet, but it should be soon.  If I remember correctly, last summer Florida fishing was fairly slow on dolphin until late August as well, and they stayed biting long into September for us.  Hopefully, we’ll get a repeat of that this year and they’ll start biting red hot in the next few days.  Good luck to everyone going fishing this week.  There are some nice fish to be caught out there, you just have to try hard for them.  Sea ya on the water. 

The fishing in Fort Lauderdale has been awesome this month.  Our drift fishing trips are catching loads of kingfish and bonitos during the day trips.  Summer action is always hot, but this year it’s been really great for us.  There’s been a lot more baitfish around this year, and wherever there are baitfish, the big fish are close behind.  The ocean has been flat as a pancake out there and the weather has been really hot.  The air conditioned cabin has been heaven for a quick cooldown after an exerting fish fight.  The hot weather is welcome though, because that is why we are catching so many fish out there. 

Bonitos have definitely been outnumbering everything we’re catching out there.  We’ve been getting 3 bonitos for every kingfish that comes into the boat, but with so many bonitos being caught,  our kingfish numbers have been good too.  The fish have all been huge too.  Lots of baitfish means their eating well and almost every kingfish has been FAT.  Most of the kings we’ve been catching this week have been in the 8-12 pound range with some 20 pounders hitting the deck here and there.  Both morning and afternoon trips have been producing very well.

 
On a couple trips this week, we’ve caught wahoos.  Wahoo are an awesome summertime fish that takes super fast runs off the reel and put up a hellatious fight.  And what a great eating fish they are.  One one of our trips, we were into a big school of kingfish and one lucky angler hooked into a 50 pound wahoo.  The guy that caught it did a great job of catching it as Captain Stu guided him on some tips to fight the fish.  We caught him in just under a half hour.  This was a huge wahoo and fed just about everybody on the boat.  Great trips all month for us on the daily deep sea drift fishing trips. 

We’ve been having some awesome trips lately on both our sportfishing charters and our drift fishing trips lately here in Ft Lauderdale.  The reefs are holding a ton of kingfish and bonitos, which make for awesome action on any trip.  Offshore fishing for mahi-mahi has been decent, as has wreck fishing around some of our local shipwreck spots.  The ocean is heating up, which should make the reefs light up even better for us in the next few weeks.  The reef fish LOVE this hot weather. Our daily 4 hour deep sea drift fishing trips are getting non-stop action from the bonitos and kingfish.  The bonitos have been coming through in huge schools and eating voraciously.  A school of bonitos will completely annihilate every bait we have in the water.  You haven’t seen excitement in fishing until you’ve been fighting 20 bomber bonitos all at the same time.  Kingfish are biting almost just as good out there.  Big kingfish, 10-20 pounders are being caught daily, along with plenty of their smaller counterparts.  Besides the big catches of kingfish and bonitos, we’ve also been bringing in an assortment of mutton snapper, yellowtail snapper, cero mackerel, vermillion snapper, red grouper and the occasional cobia. 

One awesome catch we had this week was on the all day dolphin trip.  We were trolling out to dolphin grounds and in only about 150′ of water hooked into a huge game fish on the planer bait.  This fish smoked the drag off the reel and put up a brutal fight.  We couldn’t see the fish until we got it right close to the boat in the prop wash.  When we spotted the iridescent purple color, Josh (the mate) yelled WAHOO!!  It was about a 50 pound wahoo, one of the biggest we’ve caught out there in quite a while.  Not wasting a second, Josh plunged the gaff into the water and stuck the wahoo directly in his side and heaved him over the cover rails.  It was an awesome fish and it made the trip.  The all day dolphin trip that we ran this week caught a bunch of other fish, but the wahoo was definitely the fish of the day.  

Fort Lauderdale Sportfishing has been going off as well.  Great catches on both of our sportfishing boats, the Big Game and the Out of the Blue.  We’ve been catching lots and lots of bonitos and kingfish, as well as some very large game fish around the shipwrecks.  Our sportfishing charters have also caught a couple nice wahoo and tuna this week.  On the afternoon trips, when there has been enough wind for kite fishing, we’ve had some good trips on sailfish and sharks.  This week, we’ve already caught and released 2 huge hammerhead sharks over 9 feet long each.  With all the bonitos and kingfish on the reefs, it makes for a smorgasbord meal at any time for those big game species.  This is the time of year for the best action, so if you want a non-stop exciting deep sea fishing trip, July and August are the months for you to go fishing.  Sea you out there and good luck fishing.  

Summer is here and the weather is getting hot.  The action on the reef is heating up too as the big schools of bonitos and kingfish make their way down the edge of the gulfstream.  Our daily drift fishing trips have been getting some awesome catches of kingfish and bonitos lately.  When a school of bonitos swims anywhere near the boat, every line we have in the water gets bit.  It can be pretty exciting at times.  Mixed in with these bonito schools are kingfish and the occassional tuna and/or wahoo. 

Sportfishing trips have been very good lately too. On our longer trips, 6 hours or more, we’ve been trolling offshore for mahi-mahi.  June is the best month of the year for finding schools of mahi-mahi offshore along weedlines.  The dolphins have been mostly peanuts, but the numbers of them have been great.  One good school of fish can fill the box and max out your daily limit of 10 per person.  This time of year also, you have the outside chance at a blue marlin, the grand prize fish of the entire ocean.  Unfortunately, we don’t catch them very often, but this is the time of year you will see a few caught out there.  If we caught them all the time, they wouldn’t be such a prized fish.

Our half day sportfishing trips have been fishing the reef, where there has been realy good action on bonito and kingfish.  Trolling the reef can also catch you the occassional wahoo, tuna or even sailfish this time of year.  Wreck fishing on the shallow and deep wrecks has been good for barracuda, amberjack and an occassional cobia.  We’ve even been getting some big mutton snappers lately during the day trips.

The night fishing on our night anchor trips has been great for action and probably our best trip for catching the most fish overall.  On our night trips, we target snappers and the snapper fishing has been awesome.  Yellowtails are biting pretty regular.  The muttons are beginning to show up for the mutton spawn and are being caught more and more on our trips lately.  Mangroves are biting great too and have been really big ones.  All in all the night trips have been great.  Great fishing this month and it should get better and better until the end of August.  Sea you on the water. 

Daytime Drift Fishing

The fishing in early June is always good action off the South Florida coastline.  In Ft Lauderdale, we’re seeing an abundance of activity on the reefs.  Large bait schools are trying to make their way northward, but are getting beat up hard by huge schools of kingfish.  On our daytime drift fishing trips, we are finding kingfish all over the 100’ reefs.  The kingfish have been ranging in sizes from little 4 pounders, all the way up to the occasional 20 pounder.  Bonitos have begun to show themselves on the reefs this summer with the first few schools hitting us hard last Wednesday.  When the bonitos are coming through, we catch so many fish, we come home sore at night.  It’s a blast and it lasts all summer long.  Bonitos feed alongside the kingfish and sometimes with wahoo or blackfin tuna.  When the bonitos are around, the action is always fierce.

Night Anchor Fishing

The action on the day drift fishing trips has been good, but the night fishing offers a different style of fishing;  snapper anchor fishing.  Anchor fishing and chumming has been one of my favorite types of fishing since I was a kid.  The chum brings fish in from a long way away and once the chum has been working for a while, the action heats up.  We target snapper of all species; yellowtail, mangrove, lane, mutton, vermillion and any other kind of delicious red snapper down there.  Sometimes we’ll catch something out of the ordinary such as a cobia or big grouper.  I guess I enjoy night anchor fishing because whenever you get a bite, it could be literally anything.  You never know till you catch it. 

Offshore Mahi-Mahi Fishing

June is best month for offshore mahi-mahi fishing.  It is during this and next month when the ocean calms down, heats up and the big piles of sargasm weed stack up.  This is prime conditions for big schools of mahi-mahi.  Mahi-mahi are voracious eaters.  They can grow to over 20 pounds in the first year, but most of the ones we catch in the summer are 5-8 pounders.  June is a great month for finding schools of 30-50 fish congregated together.  Find a school like that and you’re in for an unforgettable fishing experience.  Try the Wednesday all day dolphin trip or a sportfishing charter for an offshore dolphin trip.