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.