The bite is on off the coast of Fort Lauderdale this month.  May is about over and the June fish are here.  Lots of schools of small dolphin are going to be showing up offshore and the tuna/wahoo bite is going to be on this summer.  Right now though, there is some great action to be had off the reefs and wrecks of Ft. Lauderdale.  Sailfish started snapping this week again, and what a great year on sailfish we’ve had already.  This is perhaps the best sailfishing this late in the season I have ever seen off the South Florida coast.  We aren’t getting the winter numbers of sailfish out there, but we’re still catching plenty.  On 4 charters this week,we’ve caught double header sailfish by either trolling artificial lures or kite fishing.  They are moving through and very aggressive. 

Sailfish aren’t the only fishing biting out there on our deep sea fishing charters.  Golden amberjacks are heavy on all the wrecks and you’ll be lucky if you can even get your bait to the bottom.  These fish are big(40-60 pounds) and they are very, very aggressive.  There are some larger groupers around the wrecks this time of year and also cobia, but its not often a big amberjack does not grab your bait first.  The amberjacks are showing up on just about all the artificial reefs we have off Fort Lauderdale, but there are some really big ones on the wrecks deeper than 250 feet. 

I almost had a really cool fish story to tell you all about on a daytime swordfishing charter we ran the other day.  Rod and Adam went out and did a few daytime drops for swordfish the other dayy.  The bait was down maybe 15 minutes and got slammed by a huge fish.  After a 45 mintute fight, the fish got close enough, they guessed the weight of the fish at about 200 pounds.    As soon as Rod grabbed the leader, the fish took off on a sick run which resulted in him pulling the hook.  It was a heartbreaker for everyone aboard.  They tried some more drops and a little fishing into the night, but no luck.  It was almost an awesome trip. 

There have been some smoker kingfish around on the reefs also.  The drift fishing boats are coming in with king mackerals, blackfin tuna, and a lot of snappers.  The drift fishing has been improving immensly from what it was like a month ago.  Its been great action on all 3 trips, especially the night trip.  Lots of yellowtails and mangrove snappers being caught on the night anchor trips.  Most of them 1-3 pounds, but a few of the mangroves we’ve been catching lately are upwards of 5-6 pounds.  Now thats a big mangrove snapper.  A few 20+ pound kingfish have been brought in on the day fishing trips.  I’m looking forward to a great summer.   

Good fishing in Fort Lauderdale this week.  Lots of action on dolphin, tuna and some smaller wahoos.  In fact, our Wednesday All Day Dolphin trip aboard the Mary B III this week did excellent.  They caught all these fish trolling around offshore, in anywhere from 350′-1000′ of water.  The dolphin were eating lures that Josh Jr. rigged up, rigged with bonito strips and whole ballyhoos.  Everyone that came on the trip got a nice catch and went home with some delicious mahi-mahi filets.  But the dolphin haven’t been the only fish biting out there.

Shark fishing is still in full swing on our sportfishing charters.  The Big Game and the Out of the Blue have been coming in with some awesome shark catches.  These are a couple photos of some awesome shark catches.  This photo above shows a truly gigantic hammerhead shark that Capt. Chuck caught on his half day sportfishing charter out of Ft. Lauderdale.   The fish was almost 11 feet long and fought these guys for over hours.  What an amazing catch, congratulations guys.  The photo below was another awesome shark fishing trip out of Fort Lauderdale.  Capt. Josh went out and caught 3 sharks, a sailfish and 3 dolphin fish.  WOw!  Now that’s some great fishing.  2 of the big sharks and the sailfish were released, but they brought this one back to the dock.  This is the time of year that we come in with catches like this.  Great fishing lately and I think the fishing will just keep getting better and better throughout the summer months.  Let’s get out there and do some fishing!   

The Big Game did it again!  This time, they came in with a giant tiger shark, caught just a couple miles offshore of Fort Lauderdale beach.  The fish was about 8 feet in length and man, what a fighter.  This is the biggest tiger shark I have seen brought to the docks in many many years.  Tiger sharks are caught very seldomly in Fort Lauderdale.  More often they are caught in the Carribean waters of the Bahamas than they are caught off South Florida.  On this trip, Capt. Adam and Joey took out the lucky anglers that caught this big fish. 

Normally we release all big game sharks like this.  This one, when it came up to the boat was bleeding profusely out of his gills and didn’t look like he was going to make it.  Being such a rare shark to catch out there, the guys brought him in.  We’ve been catching tons and tons of big game sharks lately this past month or 2.  Hammerhead sharks are biting better than I’ve ever seen and a lot of other species of sharks are biting lately too.  Just a couple days ago, we caught and released a 400 pound bull shark.  Sorry I don’t have any photos of that fish, it was a huge one.  Anyway, enjoy the photos of this huge tiger hark, we don’t get to catch these very often.