It was a good couple of days out on the water, fishing off Fort Lauderdale this week.  The weatherman scared everyone from going out fishing, but the weather wasn’t all the bad out there.  It was overcast and a bit rainy, but we went out anyway and managed to stay dry the whole trip.  We just stayed away from any rainstorms we saw out there.  The ocean was little choppy too, but it was plenty fishable.  And the fish were biting good.  I love overcast days for fishing, the fish really seem to turn on.  We had a drift fishing charter with Tom, one of the guys that fishes with us a lot.  He owns a bar here in Fort Lauderdale and he wanted to take some of his regulars out fishing for the day.  He chartered the boat and we did a bit of trolling and then some drifting with his group.  It went pretty good.

We got out there bright and early, leaving at 7AM.  We started the trip off trolling around the reef and then a little bit deeper.  We caught some kings and bonitos on the reef.  Offshore a bit we found some pretty looking water with some scattered weeds.  We trolled along the weedline for a few minutes and got a couple cool fish.  First was a realy nice wahoo, maybe 25 pounds.  We don’t usually catch too many wahoos on the drift boats, but there have been some around the past few weeks.  After we got the baits back out, we got another cool fish, a blackfin tuna.  Just a little guy, about 6 pounds, but still a cool fish.  Blackfin that size are delicious fish and they make great sushi.  Too bad we didn’t have any wasabi on the trip with us.  We finished out the trip by doing a couple drifts and we picked up a few more kings and some bonitos.  It was a good day despite the foul weather. 

We got a little restless with this weather and no customers so we decided to do a little fun fishing this afternoon.  My uncle Brad was in town so we took him and my cousin Jason out fishing for some good eating fish for their freezer.  We made some drops on the shipwrecks and pulled up a ton of vermillion snappers.  Some of the vermillions we’ve been catching lately have been fatties.  2-3 pounders have been fairly common for us these days and we caught several nice sized ones today.  When we were bottom fishing for all the snappers, we got jumped by some decent sized dolphin fish, like 10-12 pounders.  Lucky I had a spinner ready to pitch out there to them.  We got both the dolphins and kept catching the snapper.  On one drop we came up with a huge amberjack.  The fish box was loaded and we had plenty of good eating fish for my uncle to take home so we came back in after only a couple hours.  Another successful fishing trip out of Fort Lauderdale. 

I don’t know if you guys have heard, but a charter boat named the Joe Cool out of Miami got chartered to take some bad guys to the Bahamas.  I guess the charter hijacked the boat and killed the crew.  Thats specualtion of coarse, but thats what it looks like happened.  I’ve had some people offer me a few grand to go over to the Bahamas on trips like these.  Usually its to go over there and pick someone up.  It never sounds legit though so I always refuse.  Its not worth something like this happening for a little extra cash.  We’ll see how this turns out, keep up with the news.  Cya all tommorrow.

We went out and did a little bottom fishing yesterday.  Capt. Paul was trying to hit some the wrecks he hasn’t tried in a long time, so we fished all the way up to Pompano.  We were cherry picking some spots where we thought a few snpwy groupers would be biting, but the snowy grouper bite was actually pretty slow.  We were getting lots of bites, so we put a rig down that had smaller hooks.  Vermillion snappers were biting good.  We caught about 20 so vermillion snappers.  We did catch one real nice snowy, about a 15 pounder at this one wreck we made a drop on.  We also caught a small mahi mahi that swam up to us when we were making a drop.  Besides that we caught a couple kingfish as well, trolling our way back home.  We only kept one of them, since most of them were little fish.  Anyway, there is some decent action on the shipwrecks out there.  Catcha later…

It was a great couple of days on the drift fishing boats.  We didn’t have many customers due to the lousy weather all week.  It was rainy and stormy all week so we only had 4-10 people on every trip.  Regardless of only having a few people, we still had some really good catches.  The mutton snappers have been biting all week, and actually, they’ve been biting all month.  The whole month of September has been good fishing and catching for mutton snappers.  The day trips have been catching them pretty good, and the night trip even better.  If I can get the night fishing crew to ever take some pictures for me, I can show you how good the night fishing has been.  They’ve been catching lots of yellowtails, and big ones at that.  2-4 pound yellowtails have been coming in like mad-dogs and big muttons have been biting good too.  The day time fishermen have been catching some big muttons, kings, mahi mahi and tuna. 

A lot of nice kings have been coming in.  Kingfish love the falling barometer, and with the rainstorms we had all week, the kingfish have been biting good.  Quite a few kings have been brought in this week, as well as a variety of other critters.  Some of the kings have been up to 15-18 pounds with most of them in the 6-8 pound range.  Its been a good week on kingfish. 

On yesterday’s trip, despite the terrible weather, we caught a ton of fish.  On our drift fishing trip, we got jumped by a huge school of dolphin.   The wahoo was actually the first fish to bite.  When he hit, Capt. Paul looked around and saw a nice 2*4 floating in the water about a 100 yards off the bow of the boat.  He bumped the boat over close to it with a few bumps of the engines and BAMMO!!!  Everyone on the boat was hooked up with dolphins ( mahi mahi).  We caught some big ones, some of them being in the 20-25 pound range.  It was a great trip and everyone aboard went home with a ton of fish filets.  On that trip we also caught a nice bunch of kingfish, lots of mahi mahi, a small wahoo, and some bonitos, muttons and yellowtails.  It was a great trip for us.  Capt. Paul showed us how fishing with someone with his level of experience can improve your catch.  Few fishing Captains in the whole world have his level of experience.  Just goes to show you that fishing with an experienced captain can be a lot better than fishing with a teenager right out of captain school.   A lot of guys advertise 50 years of Ft. Lauderdale experience but Capt. Paul and only a few others actually have that much time on the deep sea. 

It was a great day of fishing for us yesterday on the sportfishing and drift fishing boats.  First off, we had a good trip on the Mary B III, our 55′ drift fishing boat.  We caught a few snappers and a dolphin along with some kings and bonitos.  We had a guy in a wheelchair out with us that day.  He lost both of his legs.  Ryan, the mate on the trip said, “the guy didn’t have any legs, but he had one helluva sense of humor”.  I guess they were telling jokes and laughing the whole trip.  I’m glad they got to catch a few fish that day. 

Our Sportfishing boats have been doing great.  Some really nice game fish have been coming in.  Yesterday, we had a guy with his 2 sons come out with us just for a short trip.  He just wanted his son to get to wind in a fish, so we justwent out for a little while.  It was his son’s birthday that day.  They caught a nice barracuda on a light tackle rod.  His son, who was just 5 or 6 years old, fought the fish the whole time.  He did a good job and caught a really nice fish for such a little guy.  You can tell by his smile that he had a great time out there, and Dad did too. 

One other trip we had yesterday brought in a huge hammerhead shark.  They hooked the fish about a mile offshore of Fort Lauderdale and fought the fish for a good 30 minutes.  It was a 7 foot hammerhead shark, a beauty.  It was a great day of fishing out there, and there are some really big game fish biting right now.  Sportfishing has been a bit better than drift fishing these past few days, but the drift boats have been pulling in their fair share of fish too.  Sea ya all tommorrow…

What a great couple of days on the sportfishing boats.  We’ve been catching all kinds of cool fish.  The wreck fishing has been going off!  Huge groupers were caught all week.  On this trip, you can see we caught 2 huge big black groupers.  We were trying some drops on the shipwrecks, having already caught our limit on kingfish.  We made a drop with a live bait on one of our top secret shipwrecks that we fish sometimes.  Wham!  Instabite!  We caught a big black grouper, about an 18 pounder.  I was telling the customer how we don’t catch too many of them out here and how they are kind of rare.  Then we make another drop, ’cause we never leave fish biting(that’s our rule).  Wham!  another instabite.  Guess what comes up this time?  Another black grouper, and this one was almost 30 pounds.  Wow, that was a pretty cool end to an already great fishing trip.  

The next day we went out on another sportfishing trip.  I hear a couple Fort Lauderdale and Pompano fishing boats have caught wahoo out there in the deep, so we head out on the troll.  I was trolling in about 200′ of water with these 2 guys from New York.  It was kind of slow to start, we only caught 1 king in the first 1/2 hour.  Then BAM, a big fish bites the long planer.    We were out deep and I knew it was something cool, so I yell down, “Big fish, back off the drag!!”  The fish striped off a nice run, but we turned him.  We get the planer up to the rod tip and Chuck started to wire him up.  As soon as Chuck touched the leader, the fish started shaking his head.  Without ever seeing the fish, I called down, “wahoo!”  It sure was, and a nice one at that.  A great rejuvination to a slow morning. 

We trolled for a little while longer and caught a couple small throw back fish and some small bonitos that we threw in the livewell for later.  After a while longer of trolling with no bites, we decided to go try some drops on the shipwrecks.  The first spot I picked we didn’t get any bites.  The bait we sent down wasn’t even nervous.  I decided to go hit a different spot.  A short distance away was a wreck I hadn’t tried in about 6 months.  So we make a drop with a live blue runner.  The rod slammed dunk as soon as we got down to the bottom.  It was something big and we put the boat in gear and pulled the fish out of the wreck before he had a chance to wrap us around a rock.  After a good fight, we come up with a giant warsaw grouper, estimated at 35-40 pounds.  Awesome fish, something we don’t get to catch very rarely. 

At this point, we were feeling pretty good about the trip.  We had a few nice fish in the box, but we never leave fish biting, so we made another drop at the same spot.  This time, we dropped one of the little bonitos we had in the live well from earlier in the trip.  Agan, as soon as we hit the bottom we got something big on.  We got the guy in the chair to fight him, and stared fighting him up to the top.  This fish was fighting a lot stronger than the grouper had, so I knew it was something different.  When the fish got close to the top, I saw the colors he had on him and I knew exactly what it was.  “Giant golden amberjack” I called down.  It was a beauty, about a 60 pounder. 

By this time, we were late for our afternoon trip, so we had to head back.  The fishing was great today though.  Sport fishing boats have been coming in with good catches all week and Fort Lauderdale canals are covered with small finger mullet.  That tells me that the mullet run down the beaches of Fort Lauderdale is about to start, which means sailfish will be early this year.  We’ll see what happens, but don’t hesitate to go fishing, the fishing is red hot in South Florida right now.

We are renting our slips at the marina on Las Olas Blvd and A1A, right next to the 7-11 store and only a 5 minute walk from the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show for the week of October 25-29.  This is the perfect spot to rent if you have multiple boats to display or possibly a booth in the show.  You can keep your boats at our slips and drive or walk your customers over to our slips to take them on a sea trial.  You can take the boats out and run your customers on a sea trial or bring them over and show them the boats.  Much, much cheaper than actually renting a slip at the boat show.  We have several slips available and its going to be first come, first serve for dockage.  If you are interested in a slip to rent for the International Boat show of Fort Lauderdale, call me at (754)214-7863 to discuss options at our dock and marina.  We are located on the S.W. corner of Las Olas Blvd  and A1A southbound, only 1 block away from the boat show itself.  Call for information or to view our dock slips.  Thanks,
Capt. Andy Roydhouse

Good fishing yesterday.  We started out in the ocean, in about 100′ of water.  We were catching a few bonito and kingfish on the reef.  Decent action.  We also caught a big horse-eyed jack on the troll, a kind of odd ball catch for Fort Lauderdale deep sea fishing.  The waves were slightly rough, and a couple of the customers began to feel nauseous.  We came in from the fishing trip early, but we weren’t about to give up entirely. 

We’ve been seeing some big barracuda and some big tarpon in the intercoastal so we gave that a try for a little while.  We put out some live baits on light tackle rods and dragged them around the intercoastal waterway a little bit.  We went by some pilings and some docks were we’ve caught big fish before.  This one spot we tried, the bait started getting very nervous.  Capt. Adam yelled down, “he’s nervous ’cause he’s in a bad neighborhood.”  Well he sure was because that bait did eveything he could to get out of the water. 

Something big was on his tail and he wanted to be anywhere but where he was.  A huge splash and then zzzziiiinnnnggg of the reel.  Hooked up!  It was a nice fish on light tackle, and although we saw the bite, we couldn’t identify the fish.  There was one of 3 posssibilities.  It could have been a tarpon, but tarpon usually jump immediately after they get hooked up and this fish was tugging downward.  It could have been a big jack crevelle, but this fish was fighting much stronger than a jack crevelle usually fights.  And lastly it could have been a big barracuda.  Capt. Adam yelled down, “I think it’s a big ’Cuda” and just about the same time he said that, the fish breached the water and skyrocketed.  Yup, it was a big barracuda.  A nice one, about 45 incher.  Good fish for the intercoastal, and hungry because he ate about a 2 pound live blue runner. 

After an exciting fight of dodging boats and wrapping around pilings, we got him to the boat.  Very cool gamefish and even though the customers got seasick, they still got to catch something very cool.  We had caught a few kingfish earlier, so they had some dinner fish, and a trophy fish.  Good day of sportfishing. 

Wow, what a week.  We had some really good trips this week on the sportfishing boats.  We took out a couple of convention charters and some large groups out fishing.  We heard of some big fish out on the current edge of the gulfstream, so we went out there and put out the big rods in hope of catching a sea monster.  We put out some kites with some live baits and a couple dead bloody baits on the bottom looking for a big shark.  The sharks were biting and we got some good bites on them.  Hammerhead sharks were the flavor of the week.  We caught 2 big hammerheads in as many days.  This is a picture of us fighting a big game hammerhead shark.

When the fish came up, the customer wanted to get a mount of it made, so we brought it aboard for photos and a measurement.  When the fish got close enough, John reached down into the water and grabbed the hammerhead by it’s head.  A strong heave-ho and the fish was in the boat.  Now, he was a bit frisky for a minute, but he calmed down.  We got some good photos of the fish and then released him.  These are pictures of the whole sequence as it went down.  The fish swam away strong.  It’s nice to see big game fish like that this time of year. 

Along with the shark, we also did some drops on the deep wrecks.  We got a bunch of snappers for dinner.  Here’s a picture of us catching 5 at a time.  These are vermillion snappers and they are probably one of the tastiest fish in the sea.  These guys had a great trip and I think we’ll be spending some time shark fishing this week.  There are some big fish around.  Sea ya all out there.

I forgot to write an update ysterday, so I’m updating early this morning.  This was our catch the day before yesterday on the morning trip.  Capt. Paul ran the boat and caught the bonitos pretty good.  He got into a school of them and they bit like mad dogs, we caught about a dozen of them, but only brought in about 5 or 6 of them.  After that, Captain Paul decided to go try some bottom fishing on one of the shipwrecks that he likes to fish.  We were dropping chicken rigs, baited with squid and we were coming up with tons of vermillion snappers and some of them were really big.  One kid hooked into something huge on the bottom.  We all thought he got hooked on the shipwreck, but then the fish started shaking his head and taking line.  For over 45 minutes this kid battled this huge amberjack.  We finally caught him!  The amberjack weighed more than the kid who caught him.  What a fish and what a great fishing trip.  I’m sure that kid has a great “fish story” to tell.

Sportfishing was good today.  Today we went snapper fishing with deep drop equipment.  We started off at this spot we hadn’t hit in a long while, right out in front of our inlet.  We made our first drop and got a couple small fish on, probably some small snappers.  When we started winding it up, we got a couple pretty hard tugs on the line.  So we’re thinking, ok cool, maybe a nice grouper or something.  Then the fish takes off and makes a huge run.  The mystery fish smokes line off the reel and almost spools us.  There was nothing we could do.  If we tightened the drag, we’d break the line and loose the fish, so we just let him go.  Anyway, he finally stopped when we were right down to the knot almost.  Started gaining line back and got him off the bottom.  After a long and brutal fight, we caught the fish and got him in the boat.  It was a gigantic amberjack, one of the biggest I’ve caught out here in South Florida.  I wanted to take the fish back in for everyone to see at the docks, but it was such a cool fish, we decided to release him.  What a beauty though, he really was a monster gamefish.

So after that, we made some more drops on some different shipwrecks we know in the area.  On most of the spots we only got a few bites, so we moved on.  We got to this one spot, and I think I’m the only person that knows this spot in Fort Lauderdale.  As soon as we hit the bottom, we started catching them.  Vermillion after vermillion came in.  And these weren’t little vermillions.  We were catching big ones, some of them were 2-4 pounds.  That doesn’t sound very big, but vermillion snapper don’t get much bigger.  Anyway, we caught a whole pile of them.  One drop, we thought we lost our lead, but it ended up being that a cobia that grabbed our bait and was swimming up with our rig.  When we saw him, everyone thought it was a shark.  They look very similar until they get close.  Anyway, we got him too.  Not a monster cobia, but legal size and thats all that matters.  We came in with a great catch.

Drift fishing boats have been catching a lot of yellowtails a some muttons.  The bonito bite has slowed down and the kings disappeared for us today, but theres still good action on the bottom.  Our night trip has been the best lately for us, lots of yellowtail snapper and some big muttons too.  Daytime fishing has been decent, but the night trip, where we anchor and chum has been where the action is.  Anyway, good luck out there guys.  Hope to see you out sport fishing with us soon.