April has been one exciting month for us here in Ft. Lauderdale.  Our drift fishing boat, the Catch My Drift has been pulling in a lot of big kingfish on their morning and afternoon fishing trips.  Kingfish were scarce for us this winter, but have made a strong comeback.  They are biting in 100-200′ of water, just outside the reef.  Mixed in with the kingfish has been the occassional blackfin tuna and sailfish.  There’s a lot of bait around right now, both offshore and inshore.  Bait fish start the food chain, and with them, the big predator fish show up for some easy eating.  The night fishing trips on our party boat are coming up with yellowtail, mangrove and some bigger mutton snapper.  Our night anchor fishing trips have been the best for action, but for the big fish (kingfish, tuna and grouper) the day fishing better.

Our sport fishing boat, the Big Game, has had one helluva month.  We’ve lately been catching sailfish better than in the winter months.  Kite fishing on the edge of the gulfstream has been highly productive for sailfish, along with big game sharks and mahi-mahi.  We’re smack dab in the middle of shark fishing season here in South Florida, and the big game sharks are snapping.  On our sport fishing trips, hammerheads, makos, threshers, bulls and duskys are the sharks we see most often.  This is the time of year when all the biggest fish are caught. 

The offshore dolphin fishing is phenomenal  right now.  Big, and I mean BIG, mahi-mahi are being caught trolling the weedlines that form a few miles offshore.  April is usually a good month for mahi-mahi, but May is usually even better.  Expect to see some solid dolphin fishing in the next few months.  Along with dolphin, when trolling offshore, you also have good chances of finding tuna, wahoo and sailfish.  If you’re exceptionally lucky, you may even catch a once in a lifetime blue marlin.  I look forward to April-May fishing the whole year, because you can catch just about anything and everything.