The big game fish have been snapping off the coast of Ft Lauderdale these past couple weeks, and it looks as if its not slowing down any.  When I say big game fish, I’m speaking of sailfish, big dolphins, sharks, amberjacks, and wahoo.  There’s a lot biting off the reefs of South Florida these days.  This year has been one of the best years lately on sailfish and big dolphins.  Its good to see all these fish moving through our backyard again. 

First off, here’s a great shot of some real beauties… and a great fish too.  The mahi-mahi have been biting excellent out of Fort Lauderdale all this month and I forsee them hanging around for May and June also.  Almost all the dolphin we’ve been getting lately have weighed at least 15-20 pounds.  Those are pretty nice dolphins if you were wondering.  In June/July we’ll be getting the big schools of dolphin but they will be the schoolie sized ones.  These big ones strictly come through like this in the Springtime. 

Wahoo have also been mixed in with the other fish we’re catching.  Whenever we’re trolling the reef or high speed trolling offshore, we always have a deep bait out there for that random wahoo we happen to pass over.  You never know when they are going to hit.  In fact, they almost always seem to bite when you least expect it.  The exhillaration you feel, when you get that wahoo on your line, is unmistakable.  Wahoo are the fastest fish in the ocean.  Its quite fitting really, since they are shaped exactly like a perfectly aerodynamically engineered missle.  When they take the bait, it is common for them to go on the fastest initial run of any fish we catch.  They can pull line off the reel so quickly that the drag system begins to smoke.  Now thats a fast fish.  Add to that the fact that they are one of the best eating fish in the ocean and wahoo truly are a prized fish to catch out there. 

The shark fishing hasn’t slowed down any either.  Its still big game shark season out of Fort Lauderdale now and they are eating machines.  There is no guarantee that your going to catch a shark or not on one of our charters, but the chances are pretty dang good.  There is a huge migration right now of the really big game sharks about 2 miles offshore of Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Pompano.  They are moving through, so they are hungry.  Put down a big bloody bait in 350′ of water and you’re very likely to be pulling up something bigger than  you are.  The big hammerheads, sand bar sharks, and threshers are migrating through, but they won’t be here forever.   The hammerheads will be here for another month, then the big sandbar sharks and smaller spinners.  Then we have have to wait again till next year for the sharks to reappear.  It’s always fun while they’re here though.  This is the end of this report, but I still have more photos of some more recent catches that I’ll be posting in a day or 2.  Sea ya out there in the deep…

The Fort Lauderdale drift fishing has been very very good lately.  Lots of action on the 4 hour drift trips, as well as lots and lots of snappers on the night anchor fishing trips.  The mahi mahi have been showing up on the reefs in good numbers abnd have been eating everything we throw out there to them.  Unfortunately they don’t show up for us on every single trip, although when they aren’t biting, the kingfish usually are.

The night anchor fishing has been particularly good lately.  Captain Billy brought in this huge catch of vermillion snappers on one of our night fishing trips off Fort Lauderdale.  They were out in about 120′ of water and the vermillions bit with ferocity.  They must have been starving because we caught so many fish, it took us till daylight to clean them all. 

The vermillion snappers haven’t been the only fish hitting at night.  Big mutton snappers, and I mean big ones, are being caught on the night anchor fishing trips.  In these photos, Mr. Lee and Oliver, 2 of our regualr fishermen, are holding up a couple of their big mutton snappers caught reef anchor fishing off Fort Lauderdale.  There have been some bigger muttons and even a few groupers showing up on the night trips lately. 

The day fishing trips have been exciting lately.  The weather has been beautiful and as usual this time of year, the fish have been biting.  When the kings are biting, we’re on the reefs drifting out dead ballyhoo and sardines.  The action is good.  Sometimes we get jumped by a school of mahi mahi and then we really come in with a good catch.  Lots of action on the morning and the afternoon trips lately. 

Here we are drifting on the reef offshore of Ft Lauderdale and catching kingfish, snappers and this elusive sponge fish.  The sponge I think, put up the best fight of the trip out there.  This lady fought the sponge like a world class angler, and what a fight it was.  If it was a fish, it would have been an awesome catch.  This is her fighting Sponge Bob as we named him.

And lastly, lots of action on the small reef fish like trigger fish and stuff like that.  We released this beautiful queen trigger fish right after catching it.  This was this boy’s first saltwater fish.  A very nice first catch for him, if I do say so myself.  We also caught a big sailfish on the same trip.  This is a photo of the sailfish along side the boat, just prior to release. Nice trip guys. 

Today, aboard the Keeping It Reel, we had an awesome day out there.  I started off catching some live ballyhoos.  I started bumping them around got a kingfish on the downrigger bait pretty quick.  We put everything back out, and nothing for almost an hour and a half.  Pretty discouraged, I started bumping over toward the closest shipwreck with my spread of baits still out.  I’m training a new captain right now, so I was in deep conversation about showing him the ranges for this wreck when I see something that just doesn’t look right out of peripheral vision.

I turn my head and I see a dolphin (mahi-mahi), flip his tail out of the water, right where my right short bait used to be.  I yelled down to the cockpit, “Josh, right short!!  Big dolphin”.  Josh grabbed the rod and freespooled it for half a minute.  He yelled up, “Let’s try him,” he locked it up and started winding.  The fish broke water as soon as he came tight.  It was pretty far out, so I couldn’t see if it was a cow or a bull, but it looked pretty big. 

Cow dolphin usually get to the baits first.  Bulls have a lot of water to push with that huge blunt head and usually get to the baits a little after the cows get there.  I kept a close eye on the other baits, but nothing was happening, so we concentrated on fighting the one we had on the line.  It was getting closer to the boat now, and we could tell it was a nice cow, about a 20 pounder.  It was almost invisible, but I saw the glow of blue about 10 feet trailing behind the cow.  It was a bull and it was a big one.  Both fish were off our port side, the cow on the line and bull trailing free right behind it. 

I still had a couple live ballyhoos out of the riggers, so I had Josh wind one up close to the boat.  Both fish swam within feet of the live ‘hoo and the bull didn’t even look at it.  I pitched out a live pilchard and still, he wouldn’t eat.  One of the customers threw out chunk of ballyhoo, again no luck.  The cow went for a couple more runs and the bull just faded away.  We didn’t see him for a long time, so I said ok, boat the cow.  Josh stuck a gaff in it and threw it in the box.  It was a very nice cow, probably a 20 pounder or so.  I went down into the cockpit to pose for a quick photo when the captain I was training yells from the bridge, “There he is!  Right on top, 20 feet back.  It’s the bull.”  I ran up the ladder and by the time I got up, Josh was freespooling the right long.  We had never brought it in the entire fight of the cow. 

When Josh came tight on the bull, the fish jumped like blue marlin.  This fish grey hounded on the surface and threw a wake.  This was a huge dolphin.  I guessed him a 50 pounds on the first jump.  It was a slob.  The angler was this tall dude from Canada and wow, did this fish put a hurting on him.  He battled this fish for 5 minutes.  This fish took this guy from one side of the boat, to the other, and back again repeatedly.  The fish would be coming in easy for a few minutes and then go on a sick, rampaging run that ended with 2 grey hounds and a somersault.  The most brutal part of the whole fight was that we only had him on a 20 Shimano TLD.  I’ll tell you what, that little reel can hold it’s own.  The customer even remarked how nice that little reel held up to that huge fish.  That dolphin put the angler through the fish fight of a lifetime and what a great show. 

We finally got the fish within gaff range, and just to make sure we got the fish in the boat perfectly, I ran down and stuck him myself.  Josh ran over with the bat and put him down.  Cheers, Hoots and Hollers, Horrays all around.  It was a HUMONGOUS dolphin.  It was not my personal biggest, but definetly ONE OF my biggest dolphin that I’ve ever caught.  We stopped at Lauderdale Marina and weighed the fish.  Their scale said he weighed 41 pounds, but wow did he look 50.  The fish has a Huge head on him as you can see in these photos.  Anyway, the dolphin fishing is awesome right now, so if you’re looking for one of the most fun, best eating and coolest gamefish, come down for some Fort Lauderdale fishing action with Fishing Headquarters. 

The dates on these pictures are totally wrong.  The guy that took them didn’t set the date when he bought his camera.  I’m sorry that I haven’t written a fishing report in so long, I’ve just been fishing every day and when I get home, I take 2 sips of my rum drink and fall on my pillow.  It’s been exhausting lately with all the college kids in for Fort Lauderdale Spring Break.  We’ve been fishing non-stop, but it looks as if spring break has come to an end, so I’ll try to write up a few of my back fishing reports from the past few weeks, to give credit to some of these great catches. 

On this Fort Lauderdale sportfishing charter, we wailed on the mahi-mahi.  Huge dolphin were all over the reef and we were catching them on everything we threw out there.  A couple of these big bull and cow dolphins were caught kite fishing on live goggle eyes.  Some of them were caught trolling artificial lures and rigged dead baits.  The dolphin were snapping though. 

Just like I predicted, we had a couple awesome days througout the past couple weeks where the dolphin just bit off the chain.  These cutomers were super happy and went home with a ton of dolphin filets.  After this season, a lot of our customers have fully stocked freezers full of mahi-mahi filets.  The Wednesday all day dolphin trip has been doing great as well.  Every week for the past 4 weeks, the all day trip has come in with good catches.

Even now, the dolphin are still biting great.  Today we caught a 41 pound bull dolphin, but I’ll post that fishing report tommorrow, as soon as I get the pics back.  All in all the fishing has been awesome this season and the big game fish are still moving through in good numbers.  You’ll see a lot more big game fish caught in May and June, so be ready.  Well, I’ll definetly be posting a few more fishing reports this week, so stay tuned.  Catcha later…

A quote from one of my favorite movies, Overboard, “It’s been a helluva day at sea, sirs”.  Krsten Lyell and family went fishing with us over their spring break.  From the photos they sent me, wow, they had an awesome trip.  Looks like they caught just about everything out there.  They did a lot of kite fishing on their sportfishing charter.  They caught this big kingfish on a live goggle eye, dangled off one of our fishing kites.  A very nice start off for their fishing trip. 

A little later they hooked into the big daddy fish, this huge atlantic sailfish.  There are few fish in the ocean that have the beauty in their colours as sailfish do.  This fish put up a great fight and this angler had a great experience catching this fish.  Sailfish are more of a winter fish, but for some reason, we’ve been still seeing them here and there very late in the season.  I am glad this one hung around Fort Lauderdale for this long and I hope his buddies stay for a while too.

Well, the success of the day was sealed.  We already got the most sought after fish in the ocean, so what to do now?   Put the baits back out.  The only thing better than one sailfish,  is 2 sailfish!  Well, we never got another bite from another sailfish, but we got something none of us expected…  this huge cobia.  This one was about a 20 pounder and the fish definetly did more fighting with us inside the boat, than when he was on the line.  Cobia are not all very common, although we do catch them this time of year.  They like to follow the big sharks, turles, rays and other larger slow moving fish in search of food.  If you ever see a big 300 pound loggerhead turtle on the top of the water, look out behind it.  If you see a couple brown spots swimming next to it, they are probably a couple big cobias. 

This pretty young gal caught a fish that we call, “the scotch taped cobia”.  This is a remora, more commonly known as a sucker fish or pilot fish.  The top of their head looks like the bottom of your sneaker.  Its a suction pad that they use to suck on the side of a big game fish.  They suck onto the shark or big sailfish and let go to grab a couple little pieces whenever the big fish eats.  They are always a good sign to see out here because they follow big game fish.  Where you see a remora, there is sometimes a big game fish lurking near.  Well, thats my fishing report for today.  Thanks Kristen for sending me all these photos.  Come back and see us again next year and tell any friends you have visiting the area to come fishing with us.  Just remember, we don’t catch this many cool fish every trip.