There are some monster fish around the Fort Lauderdale shipwrecks this week.  We’ve been catching some pretty cool monster fish out there.  The recent cold snap has gotten the sailfish very active on the edge of the Gulfstream.  A few days, when the temperatures were down in the 40’s, we had a couple days where we caught between 2-4 sailfish per trip.  It was off the chain.  On a recent deep sea fishing charter on board the Big Game, we caught an 8 foot mako shark.  Mako sharks are very uncommon here in Florida.  The boys were deep dropping around a shipwreck in 300 foot of water for vermillion snappers when they got a really nice fish on.  The fish started off pulling a lot of drag, but then went completely slack.  Capt. Rod yelled to the angler, “WIND!  He’s swimming at you.”  Sure enough, the angler started reeling rapidly and just before he came tight again on the fish, a huge fish jumped right next to the boat.    Nobody saw what the fish was when it jumped and Rod thought it may have been a swordfish.  After a grueling hour and a half fight, they got the fish up to the boat and it was an 8 foot mako shark.  Mako sharks are very good eating, so we brought it in.  The customers that caught the fish took half of it to fill their freezer and left half of it for the crew to eat themselves and to give away.  Awesome shark fishing trip and thanks guys and congrats on a very awesome game fish. 

Drift fishing this week has been fairly productive.  The kingfish have been slow for us, but kingfish are not the only fish in the ocean.  The snapper and groupers are here and in good numbers.  Red snapper in 300-400′ of water are biting good for us on both the morning and afternoon trips.  In on the reef, the yellowtail snapper and red groupers are being caught regularly.  A lot of the grouper are too small to keep, but a few are big enough to bring in.  Red groupers have a very high size limit now, so all but the biggest of them must be released.  Almost all of the snapper we have been catching are plenty big enough to keep and our anglers have been going home with some nice bags of snapper filets.  The fish of the week was a huge sailfish, caught and released aboard the Catch My Drift.  The cold weather has brought up a couple big game fish, and the sailfish which have been on a lull, have started biting for us again.   Pretty good fishing all around for the Fort Lauderdale charter fishing boats.  Sea ya out on the deep sea!

There’s been a lot of recent activity on the offshore trips we’ve been running in Ft Lauderdale.  Mahi-mahi, which had all but dissapeared completely last month are starting to show up in good numbers while on the troll offshore.  Along with the mahi-mahi have been some rather nice sized wahoo that take the bait whenever you least expect one to eat.  From now, until about the end of October, we should have good offshore fishing in South Florida and hopefully some really good catches of mahi-mahi and wahoo. 

The wahoo in this photo was a very cool fish.  We actually caught this one while kite fishing on the blue water edge of the Gulf Stream.  Capt. Rod was at  the helm with this fish, and John was the mate that day.  We put out a nice spread of goggle eyes and mullet out of the kite and waited for the bite.  It was kind of slow fishing that day, so while we were kite fishing, we did some deep water drops for red snapper.  The conditions were perfect for kite fishing and the baits looked perfect out there.  When kite fishing, the bait is suspended right on the surface of the water, so you can tell when the baitfish is about to get eaten.  Before a big game fish eats, the baitfish usually gets extremely frisky and nervous. 

John yelled up to Rod, “Left long looks like its about to get eaten.”  Sure enough, a few seconds later there was a huge boil next to the bait.  Before anyone could even throw the reel into free spool, the fish had popped the line out of the pressure release clip and was taking drag.  The fish sounded straight towards the bottom and screamed off a good portion of line off the reel.  The angler got set up in the fighting chair and began the fight.  He fought the fish well and had him close to the boat in about 40 minutes.  They ha their guesses as to what it might be, but neither of the crew knew at this point that the fish was a wahoo.  When the fish came up, John shouted, “WAHOOO!”  He stuck the gaff down deep in the water to reach him and heaved the fish over into the boat.  This wahoo was over 50 pounds, a very nice size for wahoo in Ft Lauderdale. 

We have been catching quite a few wahoos in the last week or 2 of fishing.  Most of them have been caught while offshore fishing for mahi-mahi, but a few on the reef too.  The fishing on the reef has been pretty good too.  Sailfish are still biting with all the cold weather this week, and there are some really nice fish around the shipwrecks right now.  If you’re scheduling a trip to Ft Lauderdale, this is a great season to get out there and do some fishing.  Sea ya on the water…

It was a helluva night at sea Friday night aboard the Catch My Drift.  We ran our monthly Friday Night Swordfishing Trip on 1/2/09 and as you can see by the photo above, Mission Accomplished!  The crew that night was Captain Adam Reckert and Captain Josh Mahan.  There were 13 folks signed up for the trip and the weather was wonderful.  We had about a 10 knot wind out of the South East, which aboard the 85′ Catch My Drift is perfect weather for swordfishing.  The trip started off on time at 6PM and we motored out the inlet and south easterly towards swordfish grounds, 15 miles offshore.  Josh was working the deck and was busy rigging up the lines for the hour and a half run out.  Captain Adam was on the wheel and listened on the radio for some good info about the bite so far out there. 

It was dark by the time we made it out to fishing grounds.  We were in the middle of the gulfstream and we could see the lights of Miami faintly along the shoreline.  Captain Adam set up on some GPS numbers where we’ve had luck in the past.  He killed the engines and went down to assist Josh and the anglers with putting out the lines.  We had gotten 7 lines out so far.  Each line was marked with a marker buoy that held the bait at the desired depth.  Each marker buoy had a different color light on it and the seventh bait out had the red light.  Josh was helping one of the anglers put out the eighth bait when we hear someone yell, “Where’s the Red Buoy??”  Captain Adam yelled, “Reeeeel!  Wind!  It’s Him!”  The angler reeled and quickly came tight to the fish.  Instantly, the angler was on his toes and hanging onto the rod for dear life.  The fish was running off drag as if the reel was in free spool.  Josh ran to get the angler suited up with the fighting belt and Captain Adam ran up to the wheelhouse.  He knew we would have to chase this fish down to catch him.  

Josh heard the engines start up and knew what that meant.  Josh shouted, “Everybody wind in fast, we’re going to have to chase this fish down.”  Great team effort by everyone because by this time, the fish had pulled off most of the line off the reel.  Captain Adam was forced to start chasing the fish down before we even had all the other lines in.  The angler moved up towards the bow pulpit and Captain Adam moved the boat in the direction the line was headed.  The rest of the anglers got their lines in, and we began the fight.  We had only just begun.

It was about 20 minutes into fighting the fish, when the first angler was spent.  He was exhausted from hooking the fish and holding on to all that tension as the fish made his initial runs.  After 20 minutes of trying to do battle with this beast, he was too tired to go on.  Fortunately, we had 12 fresh anglers all ready to jump in and help fight the fish.  We rotated every 10 or 20 minutes as the anglers would tire out.  This was not an ordinary swordfish.  We knew by now that the fish was very large and extremely strong, but we had not seen it yet and still did not know what species it was.  Giant fish you can catch while swordfishing are swordfish, sharks (a bunch of different species), marlin,  or tuna.  We had out hopes up it was a giant swordfish, but there was no telling at this point.

A couple muscle grinding hours later and everyone was begining to think this fish was just too large and too strong to catch.  We had him on a Penn 80W International,  which is one of the absolute best big game reels you can have a fish like this on.  We catch all our swordfish aboard the Catch My Drift using a fighting harness belt, standing up.  We have a great harness that we use, that redirects the weight from the upper and lower back and redistributes it from the butt and legs.  Still, with a fish this size and strength, it is very tiring.  After 3 hours of fighting the fish like this, Capt. Adam decided to tighten the drag and either make or break the fish.

Milking the line, a foot at a time, they finally got the fish to the boat.  4 and a half hours of fighting the fish and we finally saw the fish we were dealing with.  The fish was foul hooked from the very begining, hooked in the dorsal fin.  The line had gotten wrapped in his tail somewhere in the fight.  The fish came in backwards and finally drowned.  Adam leadered the fish close to the boat and Josh stuck him with the flying gaff.  A couple other gaffs went into the fish which our customers held and we dragged him to the boarding door.  It took the strength of everyone aboard to pull this fish in the boat.  No one could believe how big this fish was and that we actually caught him.  Even those who thought there was no way we were  going to catch this fish came over and hugged the crew.  It was an awesome experience. 

The ride back to dock was noted with hundreds of flashes going off as those with cameras  snapped shot after shot of them posing with the huge swordfish.  When we reached the dock, everyone was exhausted, both from fighting the fish and because it was 3 o’clock in the morning.  Captain Adam roped the tail of the fish and swung it over the 10 ft. high Gin Pole.  Everyone hoisted the fish up as high as the pole would let us, but the fish still touched the ground.  This swordfish was over 12 feet long and estimated at over 450 pounds.  We got lots of photos of the fish hanging and then Josh and Adam went to work on the massive job of fileting the fish. 

We left the fish hanging which suprisingly made the job of fileting the fish quite easy.  Any swordfish caught on this swordfishing trip gets divided among everyone that came.  There was so much meat, everyone who came will be eating good for a while.  This trip was a big game fishing experience of a lifetime.  Thanks to all that came and congratulations on a tremendous swordfish. 

We had a pretty cool trip this week on our all day dolphin fishing trip.  We do the all day dolphin trip every Wednesday from 8AM-4PM.  We always start offshore trolling for mahi-mahi.  Well, it’s winter time and the offshore fishing can be very slow this time of year.  We started off about 4 miles offshore for the first couple hours of the trip.  I think we caught a couple small blackfin tuna that were so small we just let them go.  Other than that, it was a dead morning out there.  Capt. Stu decided to come in on the edge of the gulfstream and just fish for action so that everyone could at least catch some fish.

It was an excellent move, because the fishing offshore was horrible that day.  The boats that stayed offshore came in with very little, or completely skunked.  We hit a deep water snapper spot that we haven’t fished in a while.  The drift was perfect for what we were doing.  There was very little current and wind, so we could get the baits down the 250′ we had to drop to catch these fish.  Everyone on the boat caught fish.  The snappers were biting and let me tell you, these were some of the biggest vermillion snapper I’ve ever seen caught.  Most vermillion snapper we catch deep sea fishing in Fort Lauderdale are only 12 inches and weigh about a pount.  Every single one of these snappers were like 24-28 inches and weighed 3-4 pounds.  They were some well fed snapper. 

When we got back, we pulled the fish off and started fileting them all. The mates were cleaning fish for over an hour, and they’re pretty fast at it.  We didn’t catch a single dolphin on the all day dolphin trip, but everyone got to catch fish and take home a ton of delicious red snapper filets.  The fish are biting and the weather is beautiful.  Sea you on the water.