Great fishing this past week.  There have been many a big game fish hitting the docks here in Fort Lauderdale this week.  We’ve had some incredible sailfishing on the sportfishing charter boats.  The odd weather we’ve been having this week has made the sailfish hungry.  We’ve been getting multiple shots on them almost everyday on live baits.  With the sailfish have been some monster sharks, big mahi mahi and some very nice fish around the shipwrecks.  We caught our first Big Eye Thresher shark of the season the other day.  It was a monster shark, about 13 feet long(their tails give them about 6 of those feet).  We catch these sharks occasssionally this time of year, usually when we are kite fishing on the edge of the gulfstream.  They are rare, but we always catch a couple this time of the year when all the sharks are moving through.

Hammerhead sharks have been biting great as well.  Kite fishing and bottom fishing have been what we do on most of our half day trips.  Kite fishing is excellent for catching sailfish, sharks, mahi mahi, tuna and kingfish.  Bottom fishing is great for catching grouper, barracuda, golden amberjacks and cobia.  What coicidence that those species just so happen to be biting this season of the year.  This is a cool photo if a kid that went out with us on a night fishing trip with his dad.  He got to catch this big barracuda while downrigger fishing just above a shipwreck.  Very cool fish and I think the fish is bigger than him.  Nice job.

There have been some big mahi mahi biting too.  This photo is a very very nice sized mahi mahi that we caught fishing only about a mile offshore of Ft. Lauderdale beach.  The dolphin like this one come in close to shore in these months in search of food and to mate.  They usually hit out of the blue, whenever your not expecting anything.  I believe we caught this one on the kite with a live bait, although trolling is the best way to catch mahi mahi.  The Ft Lauderdale sportfishing has been very good lately and should continue for a few months.  This is my favorite fishing season of the year.  Our swordfishing trip the other night was a hit too.  We caught and boated a 165 pounder.  I’ll post the report and photos of that fish tommorrow.  Sea ya all out there in the deep sea. 

There are some big fish biting off Fort Lauderdale right now.  These past few days the big game fish have really been biting for us.  February is the beginning of our shark fishing season.  The gulfstream current this time of year comes in  pretty close to shore, only about 2-3 miles off.  This time of year, from February till about June, we get a massive shark migration through these waters.  Its a great time of year for fishing.  There are all sorts of big game sharks swimming through our waters off Fort Lauderdale now…  makos, thresher sharks, bull sharks, sand bar sharks, hammerheads and many others.  This is my favorite time of year to fish.  Migrating with the sharks is usually a lot of mackerel, mahi mahi, tuna, and bottom fish.  The bottom fishing is stupendous in Feb-May.  The local shipwrecks are teeming with golden amberjacks, big groupers, cobia, and mutton snappers.  Its a great time of year to drop a live bait down to the bottom.  You can come up with just about anything. 

This week out sportfising, we’ve already caught a whole bunch of big game sharks.  The shark train is coming through and we’ve caught hammerheads, sand bars and bull sharks this week.  This one was caught by some guys on vacation down here in our lovely city of Fort Lauderdale.  They got a great days fishing in and caught exactly what they were after…  something bigger than they were.  Congratulations guys on an awesome fish and a great fight.  When we fish on the edge of the gulf stream, we typically like to put out a fishing kite, sometimes 2 fishing kites, and dangle some live baits out of it.  It’s always important this time of year to dangle a big bait out of the kite too, in case Jaws shows up.  We also put a couple big “soaking” baits down on the bottom.  Usually it ends up being a nice fresh bloody bonito or a butterflied king mackeral.  They are the baits of choice. 

With that spread out, there isn’t much that you aren’t fishing for.  You have live baits out in case a sailfish, tuna or mahi mahi shows up.  Big bait out of the kite too for a big shark, sailfish or marlin.  The bottom baits cover all your other possibilities.  On that big bottom bait, I’ve come up with about every specie of big game shark you can think of, monster sting rays, huge grouper and amberjacks, and a ton of other stuff.  My brother, while doing this type of fishing last year caught an 80 pound cubera snapper.  Now thats a rare and awesome fish.  Here is a couple photos of a beautiful sailfish that Capt. Adam released the other day.  They caught it doing the kite fishing technique that I just described.  This sailfish put on a great aerial display for us all.  The fish jumped a dozen or more times during the battle to get him to the boat.  We took these quick photos and released him to be caught another day.  This fish will make a beautiful trophy.  There’s been some awesome catches lately on our sportfishing charters.  If you’ve been waiting for a good chance to go fishing, now is the best time of year to go.  There’s a lot of big fish around off Fort Lauderdale.  Sea ya out there…

Great sportfishing on our 6 person charter fishing boats this week out of Fort Lauderdale.  The weather has gotten beautiful, and so has the fishing.  The shipwrecks are beginning to hold some bigger fish on them and it should get better and better throughout the spring fishing season.  This week on the sportfishing boats, there have been a lot of big bottom fish caught.  This photo is a giant warsaw grouper that we caught while fishing around a shipwreck.  This time of year there are a lot of small bait fish that come around the shipwrecks, which attracts a lot of bigger game fish to them.  We position the boat above the shipwreck and drop live baits to the bottom.  If there is a big fish down there and he’s hungry, it doesn’t take but a moment to get hooked into a really big game fish.  Big fish that we’ve been catching around the shipwrecks this week are grouper(black, gag and warsaw), big golden amberjacks, barracuda, cobia, and even certain game sharks. 

This grouper weighed 72 pounds, which as far as warsaw grouper go is a huge one.  Although we don’t catch warsaw groupers every day, whenever we catch one big one, it means there are usually some more big groupers around the wrecks.  The drift boats have been getting some good action too.  The kingfish are starting to bite really good, after a slow month and a half regarding the kingfish bite.  On this trip, we caught 14 kingfish as well as some nice snappers.  The snapper bite has been really good as well.  Our night fishing trip, where we target the yellowtail snappers, has been excellent.  Capt. Dale said that last night, they caught yellowtail after yellowtail, all night long.  We anchor at night and chum for snappers and other bottom fish.  The chum attracts them to the boat where we drop lines to the bottom to catch our fish.  

Last night was great, and everyone that went caught fish.  Although yellowtails bite the best at night, the daytime crews have been coming in with some decent yellowtail snapper catches also.  Basically, daytime fishing has been bringing in some nice kingfish catches with some snappers mixed in.  The night time fishing has been catching snapper almost exclusively, but the action has been awesome.  Tonight is our 6 hour anchor fishing trip, so I think tonight should be an awesome night to go.  We’ll see what they bring in.