On a Sidenote:  Fort Lauderdale Boat Show has asked us to be the shuttle boat for the boat show this year again, and we’ve accepted.  We’re going to be shuttling everyone from the Bahia Mar section of the boat show to the Fort Lauderdale Convention center and then to Pier 66 Hyatt and then back again- a continuous loop around the Fort Lauderdale intracoastal waterway.  Anyway, I’m looking for a sponser to put some banners up on the top rails of the Catch My Drift while we’re shuttling everyone around.  It’ll be great exposure, and seen by a totally marine related audience.  Last year, we transported around 5,000-6,000 people back and forth from the segments of the Boat Show, and we were seen by many more thousands more, probably tens of thousands of people.  If your interested in putting large display banners on the Catch My Drift during the boat show for some great advertising, call me at (754)214-7863 and I’ll give you all the info.  Thanks, and it should be a great show this year! 

Some big kings are biting out of Port Everglades on the Catch My Drift.  We caught a smoker kingfish today, along with some big vermillion snappers.  Some of the vermillions we were catching were 3-5 pounders.  Thats a lot bigger than the average 1-2 pounders we have been catching.  This is photo of the big king we caught, and a couple of the fat little vermillion snappers.  The group shot we took here, shows we caught some very large vermillion snappers, a bunch of bonitos that we caught.  What you can’t see is the 15 pound blackfin tuna we caught thats behind the guy and didn’t make it into the photo.  You also can’t see the big almaco jack that we caught on this drift fishing trip.  The almaco must have weighed about 20 pounds too.  It was a great day of drift fishing.

Haha, a pretty cool couple of days out here fishing Fort Lauderdale.  Kings, bonitos, and snappers are biting good.  Actually the snapper fishing has been really good.  Yesterday on the drift fishing trip, we caught a whole bunch of yellowtail snappers, mutton snappers, a few vermillion snappers.  The snapper fishing was needless to say pretty good.  We  caught a couple of kings too.  Bonito bite has slowed down from the non stop action of the summer but there are still some around.  On this trip with all the snappers we caught an 8 pound jolthead porgie.  Now thats a big porgie, and he was the only one of the trip.  Kings, lots of snappers, huge porgie and some other bottom critters.. we got the whole seafood buffet.  The fishermen on this trip are gonna eat good tonight.  It took us about an hour to clean all those snappers.  The muttons were all decent sized and the yellowtail were big flags, 2-3 pounders. 

On another trip yesterday, we had some slower action on the snapper bite.  We caught a few snappers and some bonitos.  We also caught a few kingfish.  We did catch a nice 25 pound cobia though, which was a nice bonus fish for this trip.  We weren’t expecting that to happen.  Usually the cobias don’t start showing up until November, but we’re catching a few now.  Maybe we can expect them a little early this year.

On the sportfishing boats, they’ve been catching kings, and lots of ‘em.  Every trip this week we’ve come in limited out on kingfish.  We catch our 2 per person limit too quickly.  It’s ok with us though, we’ve been spending the extra time on the trip fishing for sharks and sailfish.  A few big sharks have been caught by our charter boats this week(on kingfish no less!) and we’ve gotten a couple sails too.  Every third trip or so, we’ve been coming in with a big blackfin tuna or wahoo.  Fishing has been very decent, and the big fish are starting to bite.  We’ll see how the rest of the week fares.  Good luck out there everyone.

Last week we had a week long Bahamas Fishing Charter on our sportfishing boat the Out of the Blue.  It was a fun trip and we caught a lot of fish.  We went to Bimini which is the closest island in the Bahamas island chain, only 60 miles from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  We set out early Monday morning at 6AM and started our crossing.  The customers didn’t want to troll over, so we ran fast instead. About halfway across, in the middle of the Gulfstream, we found a large board floating.  Woot!  The captain slowed down the engines and everybody came out of the salon to see if something was wrong.  Capt. Erik yelled down, “Get out the trolling lures.  Gimme a highline and a couple rigger baits out quick!”  Adam, the mate on the trip, threw out a few baits he had made up and Wham!  Instabite!  Big bull dolphin, maybe a 35 pounder hit. 

We fought the big bull dolphin, which took us a good 1/2 hour fight on a Penn International 50W.  The fish did some amazing jumps, and probably came out of the water over a dozen times during the fight.  When he came up to the boat, his colors were all lit up.  Adam saw something funny out of the corner of his eye, and saw another dolphin fish following the big one about 20 feet back.  The follower dolphin wasn’t as big, maybe only a 10 pounder.  We pitched out a live pilchard and as soon as it hit the water, the follower mahi mahi ate it.  As soon as he was in gaff range, we gaffed the bigger dolphin and threw him in the boat.  Erik ran down from the boat’s bridge and grabed the fish bat.  By now the fish was going crazy, and Adam was trying to hold onto the gaff and keep the fish from jumping out of the boat.  A couple good whacks on the head by Erik and the fish calmed down considerably.  High fives and cheers from everyone on the boat.  We circled back around and found the board again.  Made a couple passes by with some lures out, but no other fish were on it.  We even put down a planer bait to see if a wahoo or something deeper was around.  I guess we caught the only 2 fish on it, so we continued on to Bimini. 

The next couple days we did a lot of bottom fishing.  Erik and Adam wanted to do some big game trolling for marlin, tuna and wahoo, but the guys that chartered the boat wanted to throw the anchor and try for snappers and groupers.  Bimini isn’t the best place in the world for anchor fishing, but we did pretty good.  One day we caught a 30 pound black grouper, a sweet catch.  Same day we also caught a few nice mutton snappers, one of them being a 17 pounder.  We also caught a whole bunch of yellowtail, which we spent a lot of time cleaning in the evenings.  Thankfully, the Bahamas went back to the old limits as to how many fish you can bring in, so we could actually bring some meat home. 

The last day the guys wanted to go shark fishing and Bimini and pretty much all throughout the Bahamas is Prime shark fishing territory.  We soaked some big skipjack tunas that we caught the day before.  Not even a few minutes went by before we got our first big shark on.  We caught a couple monster sharks over there, and finished the trip off right.  The guys got off the boat with some sore muscles from fighting the big sharks we caught that day.  It was a fun trip and some good fishing over there.  I can’t wait till my next Bahamas charter so I can go back over there and try some trolling and deep dropping. 

We’re back in the water and taking trips again, but this was us in the boatyard this week.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.  We fixed a cutlass bearing that had given us a vibration in the starboard side of the boat.  We also straightened our shaft and took a few dings out of propeller.  It needed to be fixed and I’m glad we did it.  The transom is newly painted and looking beautiful.  We put new lettering on the back of the boat, compliments to our friends at Signs By Tommorrow.  If you need lettering done or a sign made, these guys are highly reccomended from us.  They do great work and great prices on their work- And it’s fast!  We also changed over our transducer which is the thing on the bottom of the boat that sends the signal to the bottom for our color fish finders.  Brand new and working better than ever, it gives us a crystal clear image of the ocean bottom, the fish below the boat and tells us the temperature of the water we’re fishing in.  Well, our was working sub-par before but now its working great and its all fixed.  Hopefully it will help us find the fish even more successfully now adays.  Anyway guys, good luck fishing with us out there, the boat is 100% and ready to catch some fish!

Fishing was a little slow yesterday morning.  We only caught one king and a few yellowtail snappers in the morning.  I didn’t even get a picture of the catch, but there wasn’t much.  It was tough fishing in the morning. But the afternoon was a lot better.  The afternoon trip we caught all kinds of stuff.  Garcia, a regular fisherman who drives all the way from Naples everyday to fish with us each week, caught a Flying Grenard, which is one of the coolest looking fish in the ocean.  Its really cool, and it has actual wings as fins.  He also caught a spanish Hogsnapper, which is a great eating fish and very colorful, and a kingfish.

We caught a ton of yellowtail on the trip, at least 15 or so.  And a nice pile of kingfish.  One of the kings was a 20 pounder, so there are some nice kings showing up.  Most of the kings in the 6-8 pound range.  Bonitos are still biting and we’re catching them pretty regular still.  This is a picture of our sportfishing trip the other day.  Lots of kings and a few bonitos and a nice cuda.  We’ve been seeing some sailfish freejumping out there, so they might be showing up early.  We’ll see if we catch some this week on one of our deep sea fishing charters.  AND THE CATCH MY DRIFT IS OUT OF THE BOATYARD FINALLY!!!  Horray, no more boat yard work.  It’s just no fun working in the boatyard.  But everything is fixed and we’re good to go until December when we plan to go again.  Bye everyone, until tommorrow…  

We got some good action on the afternoon yesterday.  In the morning we caught some bonitos and kingfish.  We’ve got so many bonito strips cut this year that we are releasing most of the bonitos we catch.  We still bring in a few for fresh cut bait and to freeze whole for marlin and sharks bait.  The kingfish are biting pretty good, just put your bait down about mid depth deep and wait for the bite.  We’ve been fishing in 100-180′ of water, just offshore of the Fort Lauderdale reef.  So put your bait down about 50-90′ depending on how deep the boat is at the time and you’ll get some action.  Best baits lately have been ballyhoo and sardines.  The sea has been very calm these past few days and little to no rain. 

The afternoon trips have been getting better these past few days.  Last week we couldn’t get a bite on the afternoon trips, but the bite has been picking up the last 3 days.  The afternoon trip 2 days ago we caught another nice dolphin, about a 14 pounder.  The snappers have been biting good in the afternoons too.   Put your bait all the way down and do some bottom fishing and you’ll get some nice yellowtails.  Our drift fishing boat has been coming in with an average of a dozen yellowtail a trip.

Night fishing has been great out of Fort Lauderdale.  Our night fishing trips have been anchoring on a little wreck we know in 60′ of water.  I don’t think anyone else knows about this spot because I never see any other boats fishing there.  Anyway, we’ve been catching quite a few mangrove snappers on it along with a bunch of yellowtails.  Muttons are being caught there too, but most of them are too small to keep.  I put a camera on the boat, so hopefully the night crew will think to take some fish pictures for me.  We’ll see.  Anyway, fishing is pretty decent this week, so come on out.  Sea ya all later…

We’ve been in the boat yard all week working on the Catch My Drift.  We’re doing some work to her bottom and painting her up so she looks pretty.  The Mary B III, our other drift boat has been running our trips this past week.  We’ve been doing good too, lots of good action.  Yesterday was a great fishing trip.  We were catching some bonitos and a few kings.  Not bad action.  We also caught a couple medium sized mutton snappers.  I got a report from the night guys that we’re catching tons of mutton snappers at night.  Most of them, and I mean like 90% or better of them, aren’t keeper sized.  Just a hair under legal so they are ‘happy snappers’.  At least everyone has been catching fish at night though.  Lots of action and everyone has been catching them.

Well, anyway, back to my story about yesterday’s trip.  We were catching kings, snappers, and bonitos when somebody hooks up with a huge cow dolphin.  This fish was about a 23 pounder.  Then another cow gets hooked up at the same time.  These were big fish and we were fishing in kinda shallow water for dolphin so we weren’t expecting these fish to bite.  o we go 2 dolphin on and the captain yells, “might be a couple more out there, keep fishing”.  We’ve still got the other 2 dolphins on the line, and then we see the ‘Bull’ of the school.  This fish was huge.  He was pushing a water wake with his big head, right on the surface of the water.  A couple guys threw out a ballyhoo, to catch him,  but he swam right past them.  He was all honed in on a sardine that was near the surface. 

When the bull dolphin took the bait, he jsut started swimming away casually like he didn’t even know he was hooked.  We tightened the drag a tiny bit and BAMMO!  He jumps out of the water like a frikken blue marlin!  We fought this fish for over 40 minutes.  During the fight we hooked into another 20+ pound cow dolphin but pulled the hooks on that one.  During the fight of the big bull, we got the other 2 cows close enough to gaff and we got them in the boat.  Danny, one of our regulars(a skinny guy that weighs about 90 pounds soaking wet) caught the bigger of the 2 cows, about 23-25 pounds.  He was so out of breath that he had to go sit inside the rest of the trip to calm down.  Larry, another one of our regulars caught the other cow, probably a 20-22 pounder.  Larry is about 7 foot tall and pure muscle and even he got a little winded catching his dolphin. 

The big bull was landed by David Halem, on his first trip fishing with us.  After a brutal fight he got him into the boat.  This fish was massive.  Probably the biggest dolphin we’ve caught the whole year out here.  We guessed the bull to weigh a little over 35 pounds.  Congats to everyone who fished with us yesterday, we don’t have fishing trips in Fort Lauderdale like that very often.  We felt like we were fishing in Costa Rica or something.  Anyway, enjoy the photos.  I’ll post what we caught today in tommorrows fishing report.  I gotta get back to the boat yard and paint the Catch My Drift.  She’s gonna look purdy when she gets out of the boat yard.  Should be Wednesday when we get back with her.  Cya all later! 

Sailfish in Fort Lauderdale traditionally bite in the late fall and early winter months.  The sailfish season starts around October and begins to fade off around February.  Now, sailfish are swimming around off our coast all year, but those months are just the best to catch them.  Well this year, we had an excellent season for sailfish during the summer months of July, August and September.  Most of the sailfish that we caught were actually on the drift fishing boats and most were caught on accident.  When I say “on accident”, I mean that we weren’t targeting sailfish and caught one anyway.  This is the story of a fish we caught last week while drift fishing off Fort Lauderdale.  We were fishing in 120′ of water and using dead sardines as bait.  We had already caught a bunch of bonitos and few kings that day, but we didn’t expect to get what we did.

Here we were, just drift fishing away.  Catching a kingfish here and a bonito there.  Occassionally someone fishing the bottom would pull up a nice mutton snapper.  Then some guy on the bow yells, “I’ve got a big one on here!”  Everyone on the boat kinda says, yeah right, its just another bonito, man.  Then he jumps.  The sailfish skyrockets out of the water, 20 yards from the boat.  Bill first, then the body with the sail erect, until the fish comes completely out of the water and shakes his head from side to side.  The fish falls back into the ocean with a crash of saltwater sprayed in all directions.  Everyone fishing along the side of the boat stands to attention and points.  What a site and what an exhilarating feeling.  Thats what makes these fish the most sought after gamefish in the ocean. 

The fish knows he’s hooked now, and he strips line off the spool as he takes a run away from the boat.  The angler holds the rod tight, his heart is beating a million beats a second and he’s thinking, “God don’t let him break the line.  PLEASE!”  For most people this is a once in a lifetime experience.  A sigh of relief comes over him as he turns the fishes’ head and starts to reel in some of the line he lost.  But the fight is not over.  The fish charges the boat and jumps again, attempting to shake the hook out of his mouth.  At any second the hook could pull and every time the fish jumps, he puts a different angle on the hook in jaw.  And that hook is wearing a great big hole that gets bigger with every tug.  He’s lucky this time and we get the fish to the boat.  The mate leans way over the side and grabs the fish by the bill and heaves him up and over the rails.  What a sight.  The fish is all lit up with irridescent blue and purple colors.  A quick photo of the trophy fish, a pat on the head and a splash for the release. 

Everyone on the boat comes over to congratulate the angler on an awesome fish.  “Nice job man’, “pretty work buddy”, “good one bro”.  An excellent catch, no matter where in the world you are fishing.  Sailfish are one of the most sought after gamefish in the world and unless you fish South Florida waters often, catching one is usually a once in a lifetime feat.  They call sailfish the ballarina of the sea because of the awesome show of acrobatics they often put on when they are on the line.  No other fish fights quite like a sailfish and if your ever lucky enough to catch one, it certainly is a fish for the wall.  Good luck out there guys, sailfishing season in Fort Lauderdale hasn’t even started yet this year and they are already biting good.  Tight lines…

It was a great day of fishing off the coast of Fort Lauderdale today.  We caught all kinds of fish ont he drift boats.  Kingfish, bonitos, snappers were all part of the catch today.  We had a pretty full crowd on the boat and I think everybody got to pull on a nice fish today.  A couple of the kingfish were really big, almost 20 pounders.  Thats a pretty nice kingfish to be caught on light tackle.  Sardines and ballyhoo were the best baits for the kings and bonitos, but the guys fishing the bottom caught the most snappers with squid on chicken rigs. 

The afternoon trip unfortunately was not as good as the morning.  On the afternoon run we only caught a few snappers to speak of.  Not much going on out there in the afternoon.  For the past few days the fishing on the drift boats hasn’t been all that great in the afternoons.  The morning and the night trips have been the best.  And I usually prefer the afternoons because we’ve already been out fishing all morning and we know exactly what and where to fish by then.  Well, that theory went out the window this week because the fishing these past couple of days has been pretty awesome in the morning and slow in the afternoon.  At least the night night fishing has been good.  At night we’ve been catching lots of yellowtail snappers, mutton snappers(a few nice ones of these) and mangroves and lanes too.  The snapper fishing has been pretty dang good at night and even during the day if you fish the bottom.  Anyway, enjoy the photos, I’ll post another report on tommorrows fishing.  Cya later!