Its been a helluva week as sea everyone.  Lots of action on our sportfishing trips this week.  First off the big kingfish are starting to show up on the reef in really good numbers.  We’ve caught a lot of kingfish this week and some really nice ones like the big king in the photo below. 

The big bonitos are tearing it up out there as well.  On most of our trips lately, we’ve had lots of action on the troll with bonitos and nice kingfish.  Some small-medium sized mahi mahi have been venturing in on the reefs as well.  On more than one trip this week, we’ve hit a school of dolphins swimming by.  Hungry little suckers, they will eat just about anything you throw at them. 

The wrecks have been holding a few of these really big golden amberjacks.  We usually make a couple drops on some of the shipwrecks off our coast on most of our sport fishing charters.  The wrecks this time of year hold the aggressive feeding golden amberjacks, which put up a hellatious fight on the heaviest of tackle.  Few fish can pull with the strength of these deep water gamefish.  Both of these amberjacks were caught on the same fishing trip.  Nice catch!

 Here is a letter from Gerry Smither, our charter who sent us these photos.  Thanks for the trip Gerry, and thanks for the photos.  I’m glad you had a great trip out there. 

Attached are some of the photos taken on the boat, Big Game, we went out on last Saturday.  Our Captain was fantastic.  Rod was a great first mate, constantly in motion, to make sure we caught fish…and did we ever!  Thanks for a great trip - we’ll be back!  I’ll send some more photos taken back on the dock.

Gerry Smither

The fishing is going off in Fort Lauderdale this month.  There has been non stop action on all the different trips we offer.  Our sportfishing trips have been going awesome, drift fishing trips have been full of action, the Wednesday all day dolphin trip has been red hot and the Friday night swordfishing trip has been getting some good ones.  All in all, the fishing in Fort Lauderdale is just plain spectacular. 

I always tell people, in the summer, the weather is hot… and so is the fishing.  The reefs are holding tons and tons and tons of kingfish, bonitos, tunas and other species.  Most of our 4 hour drift fishing trips have been coming in with a load of king mackerals, a box load of bonitos and a few snappers.  If you’ve been waiting for a good time to go out there when the fish will be biting, then wait no more.  The fish are here. 

The sportfishing trips have been coming in with some big game fish as well.  Some sharks, sailfish and big golden amberjacks are still being caught out there.  The sportfishing boats are also bringing in almost as many kingfish and bonitos as the drift fishing boats have been catching.  On this sportfishing trip, we caught our usual assortment of bonitos and kings, as well as this huge cobia you see hanging on the rack.  Talk about a good eating fish, cobia are one of my favorites. 

The great fishing action has pretty much just arrived, so plan on seeing catches like these over the next 4-6 weeks.  Its going to be a helluva summer fishing Fort Lauderdale. 

So this week, I took some friends of mine to the Bahamas for a few days of fishing in Bimini, Chub Cay and Grand Bahama Islands.  It was a fun trip, we caught a ton of big mahi mahi dolphin, lots of snappers and ton of other fish.  We left on Friday morning and fished across the gulfstream towards Bimini.  There wasn’t alot of action for us on the first day.  We found a big frigate bird flying out in the middle of nowhere and as soon as we got close, insta-bite big dolphin.  We hooked 2 nice dolphin.  The bigger one we lost behind the boat was probably a 20 pounder, and the smaller one was about 12.  We caught a couple little baby tunas on the way across also, but we let those go.  Not much action on the first day, but then again our trip had just begun. 

The next day we made it to Chub Cay, where the fishing was much better.  We fished the pocket hard for marlin, wahoo, tuna, dolphin… anything that would bite.  Dolphin were biting good and we caught a few really nice ones.  We also caught a ton of big barracudas which we released.  Marlin was what we really wanted to catch, but not a bite on them. 

The next day, after sleeping off our hangovers from the previous night’s festivities, we went out for some deep drop bottom fishing.  I have some good GPS numbers for some spots over there, and let me tell you, the snappers were plentiful.  We limited out in about 2 hours of fishing.  Giant button, blackfin, and yelloweye snappers were biting great.  Every drop down on our multi hook rigs, came up with 5-7 snappers.  When we caught about our limit, we headed for home.  The funny thing is that it took me longer to filet all the fish than it did to catch them.  It was a great day of snapper fishing. 

The following day we trolled all the way to Port Lucaya on Grand Bahama Island.  Again, I had my marlin, dolphin tuna spread out there, but never got a marlin bite.  We did manage to catch some big mahi mahi along the way.  When we came upon a couple big flocks of birds busting on the surface of the water, I put out a couple special tuna baits and got 6 or 7 nice blackfin tunas.  It was a good day with some nice fish brought in. 

On the last day, we trolled for home and guess what we caught?!?!?  A whole bunch more dolphin.  We had caught so many dolphin on the trip, we were begging for anything different.  Hey, most of the time of the year out of Fort Lauderdale, we would happy about catching one of 2 of these bigger dolphin, and we caught a ton of them.  Just goes to show you how ya can get a little spoiled with a few days of fishing in the Bahamas.  Great trip and thanks to everyone that came.