The all day dolphin trip this week was just plain awesome.  We caught so many fish.  The fishermen were lucky enough to have Capt. Paul run the charter this week and wow did they get into the fish good today.  The ocean was gorgeous and it was actually cool out.  The summer heat is gone and the temperatures are a beautiful 75 degrees out this week.  The fish are migrating through Fort Lauderdale now too.  Baitfish are all over the reefs.  Mullet, flying fish, ballyhoo, sardines and threadfin herring are just a few of the different types of small fish we saw getting chased out of the water by some of the big game fish. 

We started out on the reefs because the past few days the dolphin have been in close.  We were only in about 100′-200′ of water.  Well, right away we started catching fish.  First school of dolphin we hit was underneath a big frigate bird.  Capt. Paul spotted the bird circling low to the water and trolled over close to it.  Frigate birds usually follow big game fish and wait for them to chase the small flying fish and stuff out of the water.  Thats when they swoop down and grab them up.  Whenever you see a frigate bird working tight circles low to the water, it usually means there is a big fish near.  Well, that theory panned out for us today because as soon as we got close with the boat we were hooked up with 2 big dolphins.

They ended up being the 2 biggest dolphins of the day.  One of them, the bull, probably weighed around 22 pounds and his cow probably weighed about 15.  The frigate bird moved off, so we put the baits back out and kept trolling.  It wasn’t long before we found some more birds working.  Again, as soon as we trolled close to the school we got hooked up.  We probably hit 5 or 6 schools that day and every school had at least a few fish in it.  I think we came in with about 20 dolphins.  Well, after the dolphins slowed down and quit hitting, we decided to go to the deep spots and try our luck at some bottom fishing.

Well the deep spots were working just as good as the dolphin were biting earlier.  The second we hit the bottom we were getting bites.  Snappers, snappers and more snappers.  We probably caught over 50 vermillion snappers today.  Well, by that time we had a full day of fishing done, so we headed in.  It took us about 2 and a half hours to filet all the fish we caught today.  Fileting the fish was a lot of work, but who cares when the fish are biting this good.  The last photo here is what the half day boat caught, and they did pretty good too.  The Fort Lauderdale deep sea fishing is awesome guys, so let’s get out there and do some fishing!

Sorry I haven’t written a post in the past couple days.  I’ve been FISHING!  Fishing has been really good these past few days.  The sailfishing has been off the scale with multiple sailfish caught on every trip.  Yesterday, we were out with a group and we caught 2 sailfish.  One we caught on the troll, on our planer bait.  He ate a pink seawitch with a bonito strip rigged behind it.  He was a small sailfish, about a 15-20 pounder, and only about 4 feet long.  We don’t catch that many sailfish that size.  The sailfish was a little one, hooked through his top and lower jaw.  I usually don’t, but this one I brought aboard really quick to take the hook out of him.  We released it quickly and it swam away.  This fish, if we did not get the hook out of him, would have died for sure.  About a half hour later, we hooked up on another sailfish, also on the troll.  This fish was about a 7 footer, a lot bigger than the other one.  We fought him for quite a while but eventually got him to the boat.  Awesome fish, and great fight.  Also that day we caught a bunch of dolphins, some kingfish and some small tunas.  Fishing was great that morning.

The afternoon trip on the same day was just as good.  On the afternoon trip, we hit a pod of sailfish.  We had 3 on at the same time and again, we caught them on the troll.  All these fish bit the surface lures and we caught 2 out of the 3 of them.  All in all the sailfishing has been stupendous these past couple days.  I think the fish are biting so good because we just had that tropical storm come through, which stirred up the ocean and got everything hungry.  You should see all the baitfish out there getting chased around.  Its like fishing in some Guy Harvey painting these days out of Fort Lauderdale.  Besides the double header sailfish we caught trolling, we also caught a whole bunch of dolphins.  The dolphins are coming into 100′ of water and sometimes even shallower.  I can’t blame them for coming in so close to shore.  The bait in close is amazing and the fish always go where the food is. 

There has been a nice weedline out of Fort Lauderdale about 1-2 miles offshore.  The dolphin have been stacking up on it, as have been wahoo and tunas.  Lots and lots and lots of dolphin have been biting on every trip, both sportfishing and drift fishing.  The Miami and Pompano boats have been reporting good catches too, but the Fort Lauderdale fishing boats have been really pulling in the best catches.  Last picture is a great day we had the day before yesterday.  It was my friend Mark the fiberglass man and his 2 boys.  We started the day out catching live ballyhoo and switched over to trolling when we finished that.  3 big kingfish in the boat immediately as soon as we put the first few baits out.  After that, we kept trolling some more and caught this huge 60 pound cobia.  Like I said, sportfishing has been going off the chain lately out of Fort Lauderdale.  As if all that wasn’t enough, soon after the big cobia, we caught a huge sailfish.  One of his sons caught the big cobia and the other caught the sailfish.  While we were fighting the sailfish and clearing all the lines, a couple of dolphin fish swam up on us and grabbed a couple of our baits.  We caught them, all while backing down on the big sail we were fighting on stand up tackle.  What an awesome day of fishing. 

Basically, thats how the fishing has been the past few days.  Not a lot of time left over for me to write fishing reports because the fishing has been so good.  Anyway, today is my day off so I’m catching up.  Looks like the fishing is going to be awesome this week, so LET’S GO FISHING!!!

Awesome day today fishing out of Fort Lauderdale.  Today, even though the weather was still rough from the tropical storm, we went fishing anyway.  We had some brave customers that didn’t care how rough the water was, they were going fishing NO MATTER WHAT.  Well, their choice to go sport fishing today was rewarded with an awesome catch.  We started off trolling dead rigged ballyhoo along the Ft. Lauderdale natural reef in about 100′ of water.  We caught a couple kings and a nice dolphin but the amazing thing of today was the sailfish action.  We got jumped by a pod of sailfish that all hit at the same time.  It was mass chaos in the cockpit, but Rod(my brother) was the mate today and he did a great job in coaching everyone while they fought and landed 4 sailfish all at the same time.  Fish were jumping every which way and they all put on a great display.  Unfortunately, I forgot to put the camera on the boat, but the customers had a camera and said they will mail me some photos of their deep sea fishing trip for me to put on the website.  What a day for me to forget to put the camera on the boat.  We got each of the sailfish up to the boat, and released all 4 of them.  All the fish swam away healthy and will be there for us to catch another day.  The Fort Lauderdale sportfishing has been great these last few weeks despite the bad weather.  The weather looks like it’s going to get better for us for the weekend though.  This storm will be way north of us by tommorrow so the weekend looks like it will be excellent weather for us.  I’ll post some photos of the sportfishing trip as soon as I get them from the guys that caught the fish.  Fishing is good right now in Ft. Lauderdale, so come on, lets go fishing!