What a great past couple weeks of fishing.  I didn’t have time to log on the computer at all lately to update my fishing blog.  Ft Lauderdale has been red hot lately with some huge game fish.  There are sailfish biting, big sharks of almost every species, mahi mahi, tuna, wahoo and even groupers around the shipwrecks.  It has made for some exceptional fishing off our South Florida coast.  Almost all the fish caught in these photos were caught on our half day sportfishing charters.  I have a ton more recent photos from fishing, but its impossible to post them all.  Too many good catches lately, so here are the best quality photos that I’ve taken recently.  As you can see, WOW!  These are some jurassic sea monsters. 

First off, sailfishing has been great off Fort Lauderdale, Miami and the Palm Beaches lately.  Lots of big sailfish are still around and its pretty late in the season for them to be so plentiful still.  Well, I’m certainly not complaining…  keep them coming!  This photo is of a really big sailfish(just over 8 feet) this guy and his girlfriend caught with us recently.  We’ve been releasing at least 10 sailfish a week and sometimes more between our 2 sportfishing boats, the Big Game and Out of the Blue. 

Sharks too have been biting like crazy.  This is the peak of shark season for us in Fort Lauderdale and this has thus far been a banner year for us.  Sharks have been more plentiful in the last 5 years than I can remember for the past 20 years.  We’ve never caught so many of them and so great a variety.  Thresher sharks, hammerhead sharks, sand bar sharks, bull sharks, dusky sharks, and even tiger sharks have all been caught on sportfishing trips recently.  And as if the shark and sailfish action hasn’t been too much to handle for us, the bottom fishing around the shipwrecks has been extremely productive. 

Big groupers, amberjacks, cobia and barracudas have all taken up residence around our local shipwrecks.  If our customers are looking for action rather than Monster gamefish, we’ve been going “wreck hopping”, which is moving from shipwreck to shipwreck and dropping live baits to see if anyone is home.  This has been an excellent way for us to get action and make sure everyone on the boat gets to catch a couple nice fish out there.  The fishing has been really good lately so if you’re thinking about going out fishing in the Fort Lauderdale area, try a fishing trip with us.  We’ll show you all a spectacular time. 

What a monster this trip.  On this sportfishing charter out of Fort Lauderdale, we were on a shark fishing trip.  The sharks have been snapping out of Fort Lauderdale this week.  Hammerheads, silkys, black tips, bulls, and sand bar sharks.  The coolest of the sharks this week was this monster thresher shark we caught just 1 mile offshore of Fort Lauderdale.  

March, April and May, every single year here off Ft. Lauderdale and Miami beaches, we get a HUGE migration of different shark species.  This year is no different.  We’ve been having a banner year on sharks so far this season and its only getting started.  These photos are of the thresher shark we caught the other day.  The fish weighed around 450 pounds.  We guessed at the weight because we released him.  The shark was about 12 feet long, including his lengthy tail.  The tail of a thresher is incredibly long and equally dangerous.  In this photo, you can see just how long the tail of this species is. 

Thresher sharks are monsters of the deep.  They have a huge eyeball, hence their name, Big Eye Thresher Shark.  The eye of this fish was the size of a softball.  Thresher sharks use their enormous tails to swipe at and kill their prey.   One whack with that muscular caudal fin and whatever it hits is most likely dead on impact.  The sheer force of a thresher shark’s tail whack has been known to break chairs off their metal pedastles, crack through fiberglass and even break bones.  Trust me, you do not want to be blugeoned by a thresher.  When wiring this fish, you must always be cautious to not get in range of the tail.

This fish was rather tired by the time it got to the boat.  We got him to the surface, wired him close to the boat for a few quick shots and cut the hooks off as closely as we safely could.  It was an awesome fish and I’m so glad you guys got to catch him.  Thresher sharks are one of the more rare sharks that you can catch out here, fishing South Florida waters.  We’re likely to see some monster sharks in the coming months.  Get ready for some good fishing.  Sea you out there for some deep sea fishing.

Yahooooo!  It was a helluva Friday night swordfishing trip this week.  After the last 3 trips of only getting a few bites and NO boated fish, this weeks trip, we finally got a couple.  The Friday night swordfishing trip on 3/14/08 was when we got these huge ones.  It was a nice night out there, good weather and a full boat.  We got our first bite in the first 20 mins.  It was a huge fish, probably about a 180 pounder.  We got him in the boat and you could hear the cheering for miles.  It was a helluva fish and it took 1/2 the boat to fight him in.  Well, we were aways from where we wanted to be, so we pulled up the lines and made a run to the south to set up again.  With baits set out again for a while,. we hear Kevin yell, “theres’s one on the surface back here!”  Everyone immediately ran to the back of the boat.  Kevin pitched out a live tinker mackeral and the swordfish swimming next to the boat swam  over and grabbed it quickly.  Kevin freespooled to the fish for 20 seconds and locked it up and started winding.  Nothing, and we came back with a bare hook.  Capt. Adam quickly pitched out a dead tinker mackeral that was all rigged up.  Amazingly, the swordfish came right up to the boat again and took the bait.  Adam freespooled to the fish for a bit, locked up and started winding.  Again, nothing and we came back in with a bare hook.  One of the customers that fishes with us every week had a rod ready to go and pitched a bait out as well.  The swordfish, who still had not been hooked, swam up a third time and took the bait.  This time, the customer got him on and hooked him good.  I don’t know if Captain Adam and Kevin were having a bad night or if it was just 3rd try is the charm, but we were laughing about it the whole way home.  The second fish ended up being an 80 pounder, give or take a few pounds.  Both fish were very fat and fought hard.  The second fish we caught took the entire other half of the boat to catch it, so everyone that came got to fight, land and take home some swordfish.  It was a great trip and the swordfish have been biting good out of Fort Lauderdale this week.  There are still some spots left for this week’s Friday night swordfish trip, so lets’s get out there and catch some sword fish! 

March Madness is in full swing down here in sunny Fort Lauderdale.  The big game fish are biting and they are hungry.  This week, we’ve caught all kinds of sailfish, sharks and big bottom fish.  We’ve been kite fishing in about 150′-350′ of water and the sharks have been swimming right up to us as soon as we get the baits in the water.  The action is here and the fish are biting.  Sailfish too, have been biting with ferocity this past week on our sportfishing charters.  We’ve caught and released over a dozen sailfish this week.  This is a great big one, that we brough back to the docks.  It was this couple’s first big game fish and what a fish it was.  Today was also a great day for bottom fishing.  There were a couple big golden amberjacks caught along with a 46 pound black grouper.  Its been some good fishing these past few days.  Let’s get out on the deep sea and do some Fort Lauderdale Fishing.

There are some monster sharks biting off the South Florida coast right now.  This is the time of year that the big game sharks show up and man, are they biting with a fury.  We’ve been catching some huge hammerhead sharks this week and last week, and the shark fishing season has just begun.  These photos were sent to me by some lucky fishermen that fished with us recently.  The big game shark fish are not a guaranteed species of fish to catch out there, but this is definitely the time of year to go fishing if you’re looking to catch some really big game fish. 

Hammerhead sharks are one of the most sought after shark species in the world.  Their strangely shaped head, resembling a hammer, makes them a very unique shark.  Their eyes are positioned on the lateral aspects of the hammers on their head, giving them ultimate peripheral vision.  Their skin is thick and tough, like armor plating.  Their jaws are strong with hundreds and hundreds of razor sharp teeth.  They hunt their prey in the sun on the top of the water and in the blackness of the abyss on the bottom of the ocean.  They are quite literally, nature’s perfect predator.

Every year, between the months of March-June, the big game sharks like hammerheads run a massive migration northward along the South Florida coastline.    The hammerheads that we’re getting are between 6-9′ in length and average 100-300 pounds.  These are some big fish.  Along with the hammerheads are also the occasional sailfish, mahi mahi and big tuna.  Also, this is a great photo of the big swordfish we caught on the Friday night swordfish trip, a Friday or 2 ago.  This fish was around 165 pounds and fought us for over 2 hours.  I’ll have another report for you in a day or 2, but the fishing is great out there again finally, so let’s go do some shark fishing. 

Sorry I haven’t written a post in so long.  One of my engines broke down on me, so I’ve been working hard to get it fixed up right.  We got a new engine now, so everything should be great.  Anyway, today’s post is about a fishing trip for a couple young boys who went on one of our night anchor trips.  Captain Billy was at the helm and Josh Jr. and Jaime were in the cockpit with the fishermen.

It was a great night out there with a lot of action.  This trip was one of our 7:30 PM- 11:30 PM trips we run on the Catch My Drift.  It was our anchor fishing trip where we go out to the reef and anchor fish for yellowtail snappers and other reef fish.  It was a pretty nice night, only lightly choppy.  We anchored upcurrent of one of our shallow water spots in about 80′ of water.  The mates started chumming the water to get the fish hungry.  It worked.  Not soon after we stopped to fish did we start getting some good action. 

Lots of grunts, goggle eyes, squirrel fish, trigger fish and other throw back fish were caught.  We got into the blue runners later on in the night.  They were big ones too, 4-5 pounders.  Blue runners are normally not that large and they were biting crazy.  We probably released as many as we brought in.    The snappers were biting really good too.  We got into the vermillion snappers and caught a ton of them.  Vermillion snappers don’t normally bite this close to shore, but they did on this night.  Vermillion snappers are normally deeper water snappers.  We typically catch them in depth’s of 200-300′ of water.  Thats why catching them this night in only 80′ of water was so interesting. 

It was a good night of fishing and lots of action.  Sal Venuto Jr. and his friend Jonathan Cefalo, both boys age 12, were visiting from New York City and went fishing on our night trip aboard the Catch My Drift.  The boys sent me this nice email and all these photos.  Thanks for fishing with us guys and we look forward to having you back soon.