Wow, there’s been some great fishing here in Ft. Lauderdale this week.  We’ve been catching mahi mahi all week and there has been a lot of other action around the reef as well.  This week, we’ve started to see the sailfish showing up.  The weather has been cool with a nice east wind, which is perfect conditions for the sailfish bite.  This week we’ve been doing some kite fishing, which is flying kites and dangling live baits off the kite line using pressure release clips.  This keeps the bait suspended, right on the top of the water splashing around.  This is a great way of fishing, because you actually get to see the bite when the big fish comes up to take the bait.  A sailfish or a shark has to stick his dorsal fin out of the water in order to eat the bait, so ou can watch all the action on the surface of the water. 

The other day, Capt. Erik and John went out and caught a huge sailfish.  The fish was almost 8 feet long, which is a humongous sailfish for Ft. Lauderdale.  They were kite fishing and caught him on a live goggle eye bait.  The sailfish put on a great aerial display, jumping ans sommersaulting numerous times.  Everyone loves to see a sailfish jumping, but every time the fish jumps, out hearts skip a beat.  When the sailfish jump, they shake their heads, putting lots of different angles on the hook.  If the fish is going to pull the hook, it is usually when they are jumping, so whenever the fish jumps, the crew of the boat are holding their breath hoping the fish won’t escape.  This one was not so lucky.  We got him in the boat and the fish was pretty spent.  There was no way this one was going to make it, so we brought him in.  Great fish and a great day of sailfishing out of Ft. Lauderdale.

The drift boats continue to bring in good catches of dolphins and yellowtail snappers.  thh schools of dolphin have been hitting us whenever we least expect it, just swimming in really fast and eating every bait they can fit down their mouths.  We’ve been getting them like this all week, and no signs of them slowing down at all either.  Yellowtail snappers have been biting good too.  Lots of action on yellowtails on the reefs whenever the kingfish bite slows down and the customers try putting their baits on the bottom.  Both the drift fishing and sport fishing boats have been doing really good out there all week.  The fish are here so make time to go fishing.  You gotta catch ‘em while they are biting.  Sea ya on the deep sea.

The drift fishing boats this this week, out of Ft. Lauderdale, are catching lots of dolphin.  We’ve been doing our normal reef fishing trips, just heading out about a mile offshore of Ft. Lauderdale and putting out our dead ballyhoo and sardines.  We’ve been getting good kingfish action, catching some 5-10 poundrs here and there.  On every trip these past few days, we’ve had a school of some dolphins swim up on us and attack our baits.  Usually about 10 or 12 dolphins are in the school, and we usually hook up to most or all of them.

During the fights though, we usually loose a couple of them when they jump out of the water and shake the hooks.  Ballyhoo and sardines have been the best baits for catching them, although if someone has a squid ready to throw at them, they will definetly bite that too.  Most of the dolphins have been about 5-10 pounders and some bigger ones mixed in.  It’s a pretty good sign that every day trip this week we’ve caught dolphin on, so they must be here in Ft. Lauderdale. 

The Friday Night Swordfishing trip is BACK!!! and better than ever!  We had a couple weeks where we didn’t make it out due to foul weather but the weather is much nicer these days.  With seas about 2-4′ we can easily get out there to swordfish grounds when the smaller boats can’t make it.  That gives us the whole ocean to ourselves.  The swordfish bite wasn’t red hot this week, but we did manage to catch a nice one. 

We started the trip at 6PM, like we usually do and headed out 15 miles offshore to swordfish territory.  It was Capt. Adam and Kevin as crew for the trip.  The water was a bit choppy, but plenty fishable, especially on an 85′ fishing boat.  We put out our squids and blue runners on the first drift and not much happened for us.  We did catch a nice barracuda.  Not the desired species, but a nice cuda none the less. 

About 11PM, Capt. Adam decided to set up for the second drift.  We hooked into a nice shark.  After fighting the fish for a little while, he ended up biting through the leades and cut us off.  We never got to see the fish.  So on the 3rd drift, one of our regulars, Dan, fishing with his daughter and friend, put down a rigged mackrel on a wire leader so that if a shark did bite us, we would catch it.  The bait was supposed to be a 300′ bait for us, but when we got down about 150′ the swordfish ate.  They saw the light stick near the bait shooting up to the top of the water.  Bammo, Hooked UP!!  We fought the fish for about an hour before we got him to the boat.  A beautiful fish at about 62″ forklength, an estimated 120 pounder. 

That was the only swordfish we caught that night, but after sitting in on the swordfish trip the last couple weeks it was a great trip.  Everybody that wanted fish for dinner got to take a bunch home that night.  This Friday should be a good trip.  The water is going to be a bit choppy but it should be calmer than it was last week.  Give us a call if you want to go out on Friday’s trip.