The summertime slaughter of bonitos is about over.  We’re still catching some smaller ones on the drift fishing trips, but the big, tackle buster bonitos seem to have moved on.  September is the month for kingfish in Fort Lauderdale.  The kingfish we’re catching out there have been very nice sized and are averaging 12-15 pounds.  We’re looking forward to the smoker kingfish showing up for the September-October bite.  Yesterday on a late day trip aboard the Mary B III, Capt. Kevin had a great trip with a 7 foot sailfish, a big bull dolphin, 2 blackfin tunas, some bonitos and boxful of nice yellowtail snapper.  Great job to Kevin and crew and all the anglers. 

The snapper fishing the last 2 weeks has been very good, during the day and the night trips.  Muttons have been averaging 5-8 pounds and the yellowtails have been 2-3 pounds.  There has been an abundance of Warsaw groupers biting on the shipwrecks.  Our drift fishing boats and the sportfishing boats are catching them when the conditions are good for wreck fishing.  Warsaws are one of the largest groupers that we catch and are allowed to keep.  They average 40-60 pounds and are very good eating.  Late summer and early fall are always hot months for these groupers.

Wreck fishing in general has been very good for us.  Vermillion snappers are loaded up on the shallow wrecks.  These fish give us an easy way to catch all our customers enough fish for dinner, without spending much time.  Some big game fish are showing up on the wrecks this month also.  A couple monster sharks were caught this week by our boat, the Big Game.  Capt. Rod caught and released an 8′ bull shark on yesterday’s morning trip by soaking a couple big bloody kingfish heads as bait alongside a wreck.  Big jacks are being caught next to these wrecks as well dropping live baits to the bottom.  It’s been some excellent fishing this week.  We’re looking forward to a great Sept-Oct fishing season.  Sea you on the water. 

We’re having one helluva fishing season this summer.  The action on the reef is just amazing.  Bonitos are dominating the bite on the reef, leaving us little down time when we’re not hooked up fighting a fish.  The King Mackerel bite is hot this month too.  The Kings are averaging 4-10 pounds and are biting excellent on both the drift fishing and the sport fishing trips.  Blackfin tuna, weighing up to 30-35 pounds, are biting sporadically on the reef.  They travel through, usually in groups of 2-3 fish, along the reefs eating the ballyhoo and sardines.  They don’t bite on every trip, but are a great find when we do catch a couple.

Offshore fishing has been hit or miss lately.  And with all the action in on the reefs, there’s been little reason to fish out that far.  A few boats are finding some small schools of mahi-mahi, but they really haven’t made their grand summer entrance yet.  Last year the mahi-mahi bite was late and I suspect it will be this year again.  I foresee them biting really good in Late August and throughout September.  I’ll keep you posted if they start biting.  We caught this monster dolphin on a half day drift fishing trip just 1 mile offshore. 

We’ve been doing a lot of bottom fishing lately too and the bite is really strong.  Snowy groupers are hitting on the ultra-deep bottom spots, along with some small to medium sized tile fish.  The 200-300′ deep shipwrecks are holding some pretty big amberjacks.  Amberjacks have a hard time ignoring a frisky blue runner or small bonito dropped to the bottom.  A few unexpected Warsaw groupers were caught this week also.  Deep dropping on the wrecks is routinely superb in the late summer.

We’re capturing a few cobia out there now on the drift fishing trips.  Cobia tend to follow closely behind sea turtles and sting rays, eating up any small shellfish that get churned up as they swim by.  We see a lot of sea turtles this time of year because the water is so flat calm and they are easy to spot.  This lucky fisherman threw a pitch bait he had ready a few feet away from a sea turtle that surfaced near the boat.  The cobia attacked the bait the second it hit the water.  Moral of the story:  Always be ready out there… you never know what’s going to swim up on you.  Good luck out there fishing everyone.  Sea ya on the water. 

 Its a great season for fishing here in Ft Lauderdale.  The action on the reefs is non stop with abundant schools of bonitos and kingfish biting.  The kings and bonitos are biting well on both the trolling boats and on the drift fishing boats.  Summer is always the best season of the year for action on the reefs.  Mixed in with the kingfish and bonitos, is the occassional blackfin tuna.  Blackfins migrate through our waters in the summer months, traveling amongst the schools of the other migrating mackerels.  You won’t know whether you’ve hooked into a bonito or a blackfin tuna until you’ve fought the fish to within gaffing distance.  So make sure to fight every suspected bonito to the boat with the same finesse and patience as you would a giant blackfin tuna. 

Cobia are beginning to show up on the reefs and wrecks along the south florida coastline.  Cobia are a unique fish in that they tend to follow behind stingrays, eating the crabs and other small crustaceans the ray unburies as it swims.  We’re getting some cobia around some of the local shipwrecks in shallow water.  Cobia are an excellent eating fish and take on the flavor of their main diet, fresh crab.  They can sometimes be found in very large schools of 30 or more fish.  When you catch a cobia, keep a ready eye on all your other baits as you may hook into several other cobia within the same school. 

Deep dropping for groupers is working great out there too.  Our sportfishing boats are spending some of their trips poking around the deep shipwrecks in search of snowy and other deep water groupers.  There are some very large snowy groupers biting along the Florida coast and right now is a great time to fish for them.  Snowys we’re catching now are averaging 20+ pounds.  Excellent fishing this summer and we’re expecting a great couple months.  Sea ya on the water.  

We’re having an outstanding fishing season this May, here in Ft Lauderdale.  The ocean is alive with an abundance of fish this season.  First off, the fishing on the reef is booming.  King mackeral are biting strong in the 80′-150′ depth range.  Drifting is probably the best method to catch kingfish this time of year, but trolling can be effective as well.  The kingfish are averaging 6-10 pounds with a monster 25+ pounder mixed in once in a while.  While drifting for kings, we’re also catching a lot of bonitos this time of year.  What bonitos lack in dinner quality, they make up for in sheet fighting ability.  No other fish it’s size puts on as good a battle as a bonito does.  If they were good eating, they would be the perfect fish. 

Grouper season has finnally opened up!  After a 4 month closure, groupers are finally legal to catch and keep again.  We’ve started our grouper season with a bang, hitting some nice sized red and gag groupers on the shallower spots, and some big blacks and warsaw grouper on our deep spots.  Because of the grouper closure that we’ve been under, we haven’t been fishing our grouper spots at all, so they all well stocked.  Cobia, another species of fish that live around the shipwrecks, are being caught here and there too.  Amberjacks are the heavy hitters on the wrecks these days.  They always come through our waters this season in mass numbers and congregate around the 200-300′ shipwrecks.  They get to be humongous, 40-70 pounds and fight with trmendous brute force.  The second they take the bait, an amberjack will take a hard, fast run to try and wrap you up around a peice of the wreck or a rock.  When wreck fishing, as soon as we get the bite, the captain will throttle up the boat to try to ‘pull’ the big amberjack away from the wreck, eliminating his defenses.  Once you get them away from the wreck, its a brutal Tug-o-War to get them to the boat.  They are a really fun fish to catch.

Fishing the edge of the gulfstream is great this season also.  On our sportfishing trips, we do a lot of kite fishing on the edge of the Gulfstream.  Its a great area because a lot of migratory fish travel along that current edge while making their way northward.  Kite fishing is a technique of fishing where we fly kites and dangle live baits from pressure release clips so that the baitfish is suspended and splashing right on the surface of the water.  The coolest thing about this technique of fishing is that when the big game fish comes up to take the bait, he has to chase the baitfish around on the top of the water.  This is an awesome show because the baitfish is always going nuts trying to get away, and the sailfish or shark is right on the surface going crazy tryuing to ge the baitfish in their mouth.  Its really cool to watch and a very successful method to catch big game fish this time of year. 

Offshore fishing is feast or famine, how it usually is.  You can go out and find a school of dolphin, and load the box with fish.  Or you can go out there and find nothing all day.  Its a gamble, but it pays off bigtime if you find some schools of fish out there.  One school of dolphin could have up to 50 fish in it.  When it comes to offshore fishing, all you need is time, and the more time the better.  I always reccomend a 6 or an 8 hour charter for fishing offshore, so that you have plenty of time to look around and cover lots of ground.  If you find a nicely formed weedline, or a big piece of driftwood floating, or some frigate birds flying low to the water and circling, then there are probably some dolphin there.  

The fishing lately in Ft Lauderdale has been great, and should continue to be great for a couple more months.  There is a lot of variety around this season, which gives us a lot of options out there to bring back fish.  Good luck to everyone out there fishing.  Bring back a big one!  Sea ya on the water. 

Drift Fishing Report

It’s a great season right now for drift fishing in Ft Lauderdale.  Spring is a great season to catch smoker kingfish, blackfin tuna and mahi-mahi along the reef.  Bottom fishing for snapper and grouper is good this time of year as well.  During our morning and afternoon drift trips, we’re catching a good amount of kingfish between 5-10 pounds.  Every so often, we’ll catch a giant smoker king upwards of 30 pounds.  Mahi-mahi, which are usually an offshore fish, will come in on the reef during the spring for some easy grazing on baitfish.  On a few trips this week, in only 100′ of water, we’ve been suddenly jumped by a school of mahi-mahi.  It’s good to see them showing up so early. 

Night anchor fishing is excellent this time of year.  Yellowtails are biting really good, making the night trip our best trip for action.  Mixed in with the yellowtails are always mangrove and mutton snappers.  Mutton snappers are the bigger snappers that we catch, reaching sizes of 10-15 pounds.  Mangroves (we call them ‘grovers’), can get to be 5-6 pounds.  Red groupers are biting like mad, but unfortunately they are out of season for a couple more weeks.  We’ll get them soon! 

Sport Fishing Report

Spring is my favorite sportfishing season of the whole year.  Why?  Because just about every type of big game fish that inhabits Ft Lauderdale bites this time of year.  Kingfish and tuna are biting on the reef, snapper and groupers on the bottom, mahi-mahi and wahoo are biting offshore, wreck fishing is awesome for amberjacks and sometimes cobia, and this is the best season of the year for shark fishing on the edge of the gulfstream.  It’s easier to say what’s not biting this time of year.   Our catches during the spring fishing months make us look really, really good

A lot of fishermen that come fishing with us this time of year are looking to catch the undisputed monster of all big game fish, sharks.  Ft Lauderdale is awesome because of the annual shark migration that occurs just 1 mile off our coast over the next few months.  Hammerheads, thresher sharks, makos, bull sharks, duskys and tiger sharks are some of the shark species we’ll catch between now and the end of June.  Best technique for this is to fly fishing kites with live baits on the edge of the gulfstream with a couple big bloody baits down on the bottom.  On the kite baits, you can catch sharks, sailfish, tuna and mahi-mahi.  On the bottom baits, you’re primarily looking for sharks but I’ve caught some strange and unexpected fish on those big bloody bottom baits. 

The wreck fishing is really awesome and I make at least a few deep drops around the wrecks on all my charters.  It’s a great way to catch some quick big game fish.  Amberjacks are the primary big game resident around the wrecks and are abundant this season.  Groupers, snappers, cobia and barracuda all thrive among these shipwrecks also.  I love wreck fishing this time of year because we can go out there and catch some 40-50 pound fish really quick. 

Fort Lauderdale is a hotspot for fishing in the spring, so come on out fishing;  The water is fine! 

 Sailfish, kingfish and tuna…  Oh My!  The fishing is very good this holiday season here in Fort Lauderdale, with quite a bit of kingfish action showing up on the reef.  The morning and afternoon drift boats are catching kingfish, snappers, some blackfin tuna and the odd-ball grouper or cobia.  The night anchor fishing for snappers is really good this month too.  Yellowtails, mangrove and mutton snappers are snappin’ on the night trips.  A few groupers are being caught at night too, red grouper, blacks and scamps.   

 The big game sportfishing trips are catching some big ones out there too.  We’re smack dab in the middle of sailfish season here in South Florida and the bite is on.  Winter is always the time to go after sailfish and the conditions lately have been the best; light wind and cool temperatures.  We catch most of our sailfish kite fishing, where we present our baits by suspending them from kites.  It’s a fun way to fish because when the sailfish comes up take the bait, you get to watch all the action right on the top of the water.  It’s pretty awesome watching sailfish chasing a live bait around on the surface.
Sailfish aren’t the only fish out there this season.  The deep shipwrecks are holding big grouper, amberjack and cobia.  Spring is the all around best season for wreck fishing in Fort Lauderdale, but we always like to give wreck fishing a few minutes each trip.  You never know what you might catch dropping baits that deep.   

 We also caught couple of huge wahoo this week on the troll.  Wahoo normally average around 15-20 pounds, but a few of the ones we’ve caught lately peaked the scales at over 50 pounds.  That’s a smoker wahoo.  Winter fishing is going great.  Sea you on the water everyone.

-Capt. Andy

 The Wednesday all day dolphin trip was red hot this week.  Captain Stu began trolling offshore, looking for a weedline or something else nice to fish to.  High up and off in the distance, we spotted a frigate bird circling and trolled towards it to investigate.  When we came closer, another frigate bird came into view circling the same area, flying low to the water.  As we trolled close, we got an immediate bite on the short bait, a nice dolphin.  Capt. Stu slowed the boat down and we fought the fish.  As we got the dolphin close to the boat, we could see a couple more were following.  A couple fishermen quickly threw out pitch baits.  The following dolphin ate the pitch baits at once.  We landed all 3 of those, plus caught another as we trolled near the birds again.  All 4 dolphin were 7-8 pounds a piece. 

The next hour of the trip was relatively uneventful.  We trolled along, had a few mystery bites, but no other fish for a while.  The mate onboard, Josh, caught sight of a floating piece of wood.  Captain Stu set the boat up on a drift near the log.  As soon as we threw the first bait in the water, we could see a couple dolphin fish swim over towards us from underneath the log.  We caught the first few right away and picked at them for about 30 minutes, ending up with 10 more dolphin from that school.  When we stopped getting bites, we set back up on the troll, heading south along a nicely formed weedline. 

We trolled along the weedline for a while with no bites.  We were a pretty good ways offshore, so we changed course and began heading in the distance toward the inlet.  It was about a half hour of nothing when suddenly every line we had out slammed down hard.  With 8 dolphin jumping behind the boat, things got chaotic for a few minutes.  Captain Stu could see from his lookout in the wheelhouse that there were dolphin swimming everywhere around the boat.  He shut down the engines and yelled to everyone to cast out their pitch baits.  Dolphins were around the boat jumping, the ones we just caught were flopping on the deck, it was awesome.  Josh, our mate, rigged everyone up with bailing rigs so we could catch them quicker. 

We fished on that same drift for over an hour, catching dolphin literally non-stop.  The waters around the boat were swarming with streaks of yellow and turquoise as dolphin frenzied and circled the boat.  Ones that looked a little small or just barely legal size, we just threw back without measuring.  There were so many fish in the boat, everyone on board had caught MANY.  Captain Stu looked into the fish box and said, “We gotta stop fishing for a minute and get a count on these fish.”  Josh pulled the dolphin out of the fish box, one by one and counted them up.  The final count came up at 57 dolphin already boated.  The limit per vessel is 60, so we caught 3 more quick dolphin and started up the engines to go home.  As we were leaving the area, Captain Stu said it looked like there were 400 dolphin still in the water.  We couldn’t keep anymore and it was late in the day so we headed for home. 

Since we were headed right past in on the way home, Captain Stu stopped at his favorite snapper hole for one drift.  We caught about a dozen vermillion snapper, icing on the cake for a stupendous deep sea fishing adventure.  Thanks to all that came and I’m glad you got to experience the awesome rush of finding a gold mine of dolphin offshore.  I hope next week is just as good.  Sea ya on the water. 

 The deep sea fishing action has been excellent for the Fort Lauderdale fishing boats.  Lots of kingfish are making it easy to catch everyone a fish or 2.  The kingfish this time of year average 4-10 pounds, but the occassional Autumn kingfish can sometimes be 20 pounds or bigger.  The reef has been holding a lot of kingfish, but these months also offer some other big fish on the reef.  Blackfin tuna are a great fighting fish that we catch trolling and drifting the reef this time of year.  Wahoo too are around and can be caught fishing the reef.  We usually catch a wahoo whenever you least expect it and they are an exhillarating catch.  Barracuda, schoolie mahi-mahi and snappers/groupers are also biting good this season and can add great variety to the catch. 

Our drift fishing boat has been doing well drifting the reef in 80′-140′ of water.  Lots of kingfish along with some bonitos have made up the majority of our catches lately.  Those fishermen fishing the bottom are hooking into yellowtail snapper, red grouper and some very nice sized Mutton snapper.  The night anchor trips, which target snapper specifically, are coming in with solid numbers on yellowtails, along with nice mangrove snappers and some larger mutton snappers.  A few groupers at night, but most of our groupers lately have been caught on the day trips. 

Our sportfishing boats have really been shining lately.  Sailfish season is upon us and they have already begun to make their presence known.  Kite fishing has been very effective for sailfish this week with a couple trips catching multiples.  Sailfish are the most sought after gamefish in the ocean and sportfishing Fort Lauderdale from September to January is about as good as it gets for us.  Big game sharks are biting fiercly out in the deep, on the 350′ dropoff which is about 2 miles off our coast.  Some big hammerhead sharks, bull sharks and spinner sharks have been caught aboard the Big Game and the Out of the Blue these past couple weeks.  Offshore fishing for mahi-mahi has been productive too.  The summer months were relatively slow for us on mahi-mahi, but just as last year, the mahi-mahi have finally showed up late and are beginning to bite strong.  Lastly, the wreck fishing for grouper has been very good for us.  Both shallow water and deep water groupers are hitting live baits dropped around shipwrecks.  Amberjacks are also biting good around the deeper shipwrecks. 

The Autumn fishing season is always good for us in South Florida.  There is a good variety of fish around and with some good tactics and a bit of luck, you can have a great fishing day.  The weather for us has been beautiful and is starting to cool down.  I look forward to our beautiful 75 degree weather coming soon and some awesome fishing stories to share.  Sea you on the water.

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.