The fishing in Fort Lauderdale has been awesome this month.  Our drift fishing trips are catching loads of kingfish and bonitos during the day trips.  Summer action is always hot, but this year it’s been really great for us.  There’s been a lot more baitfish around this year, and wherever there are baitfish, the big fish are close behind.  The ocean has been flat as a pancake out there and the weather has been really hot.  The air conditioned cabin has been heaven for a quick cooldown after an exerting fish fight.  The hot weather is welcome though, because that is why we are catching so many fish out there. 

Bonitos have definitely been outnumbering everything we’re catching out there.  We’ve been getting 3 bonitos for every kingfish that comes into the boat, but with so many bonitos being caught,  our kingfish numbers have been good too.  The fish have all been huge too.  Lots of baitfish means their eating well and almost every kingfish has been FAT.  Most of the kings we’ve been catching this week have been in the 8-12 pound range with some 20 pounders hitting the deck here and there.  Both morning and afternoon trips have been producing very well.

 
On a couple trips this week, we’ve caught wahoos.  Wahoo are an awesome summertime fish that takes super fast runs off the reel and put up a hellatious fight.  And what a great eating fish they are.  One one of our trips, we were into a big school of kingfish and one lucky angler hooked into a 50 pound wahoo.  The guy that caught it did a great job of catching it as Captain Stu guided him on some tips to fight the fish.  We caught him in just under a half hour.  This was a huge wahoo and fed just about everybody on the boat.  Great trips all month for us on the daily deep sea drift fishing trips. 

We’ve been having some awesome trips lately on both our sportfishing charters and our drift fishing trips lately here in Ft Lauderdale.  The reefs are holding a ton of kingfish and bonitos, which make for awesome action on any trip.  Offshore fishing for mahi-mahi has been decent, as has wreck fishing around some of our local shipwreck spots.  The ocean is heating up, which should make the reefs light up even better for us in the next few weeks.  The reef fish LOVE this hot weather. Our daily 4 hour deep sea drift fishing trips are getting non-stop action from the bonitos and kingfish.  The bonitos have been coming through in huge schools and eating voraciously.  A school of bonitos will completely annihilate every bait we have in the water.  You haven’t seen excitement in fishing until you’ve been fighting 20 bomber bonitos all at the same time.  Kingfish are biting almost just as good out there.  Big kingfish, 10-20 pounders are being caught daily, along with plenty of their smaller counterparts.  Besides the big catches of kingfish and bonitos, we’ve also been bringing in an assortment of mutton snapper, yellowtail snapper, cero mackerel, vermillion snapper, red grouper and the occasional cobia. 

One awesome catch we had this week was on the all day dolphin trip.  We were trolling out to dolphin grounds and in only about 150′ of water hooked into a huge game fish on the planer bait.  This fish smoked the drag off the reel and put up a brutal fight.  We couldn’t see the fish until we got it right close to the boat in the prop wash.  When we spotted the iridescent purple color, Josh (the mate) yelled WAHOO!!  It was about a 50 pound wahoo, one of the biggest we’ve caught out there in quite a while.  Not wasting a second, Josh plunged the gaff into the water and stuck the wahoo directly in his side and heaved him over the cover rails.  It was an awesome fish and it made the trip.  The all day dolphin trip that we ran this week caught a bunch of other fish, but the wahoo was definitely the fish of the day.  

Fort Lauderdale Sportfishing has been going off as well.  Great catches on both of our sportfishing boats, the Big Game and the Out of the Blue.  We’ve been catching lots and lots of bonitos and kingfish, as well as some very large game fish around the shipwrecks.  Our sportfishing charters have also caught a couple nice wahoo and tuna this week.  On the afternoon trips, when there has been enough wind for kite fishing, we’ve had some good trips on sailfish and sharks.  This week, we’ve already caught and released 2 huge hammerhead sharks over 9 feet long each.  With all the bonitos and kingfish on the reefs, it makes for a smorgasbord meal at any time for those big game species.  This is the time of year for the best action, so if you want a non-stop exciting deep sea fishing trip, July and August are the months for you to go fishing.  Sea you out there and good luck fishing.