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. 

 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.

Summer is here and the weather is getting hot.  The action on the reef is heating up too as the big schools of bonitos and kingfish make their way down the edge of the gulfstream.  Our daily drift fishing trips have been getting some awesome catches of kingfish and bonitos lately.  When a school of bonitos swims anywhere near the boat, every line we have in the water gets bit.  It can be pretty exciting at times.  Mixed in with these bonito schools are kingfish and the occassional tuna and/or wahoo. 

Sportfishing trips have been very good lately too. On our longer trips, 6 hours or more, we’ve been trolling offshore for mahi-mahi.  June is the best month of the year for finding schools of mahi-mahi offshore along weedlines.  The dolphins have been mostly peanuts, but the numbers of them have been great.  One good school of fish can fill the box and max out your daily limit of 10 per person.  This time of year also, you have the outside chance at a blue marlin, the grand prize fish of the entire ocean.  Unfortunately, we don’t catch them very often, but this is the time of year you will see a few caught out there.  If we caught them all the time, they wouldn’t be such a prized fish.

Our half day sportfishing trips have been fishing the reef, where there has been realy good action on bonito and kingfish.  Trolling the reef can also catch you the occassional wahoo, tuna or even sailfish this time of year.  Wreck fishing on the shallow and deep wrecks has been good for barracuda, amberjack and an occassional cobia.  We’ve even been getting some big mutton snappers lately during the day trips.

The night fishing on our night anchor trips has been great for action and probably our best trip for catching the most fish overall.  On our night trips, we target snappers and the snapper fishing has been awesome.  Yellowtails are biting pretty regular.  The muttons are beginning to show up for the mutton spawn and are being caught more and more on our trips lately.  Mangroves are biting great too and have been really big ones.  All in all the night trips have been great.  Great fishing this month and it should get better and better until the end of August.  Sea you on the water. 

Daytime Drift Fishing

The fishing in early June is always good action off the South Florida coastline.  In Ft Lauderdale, we’re seeing an abundance of activity on the reefs.  Large bait schools are trying to make their way northward, but are getting beat up hard by huge schools of kingfish.  On our daytime drift fishing trips, we are finding kingfish all over the 100’ reefs.  The kingfish have been ranging in sizes from little 4 pounders, all the way up to the occasional 20 pounder.  Bonitos have begun to show themselves on the reefs this summer with the first few schools hitting us hard last Wednesday.  When the bonitos are coming through, we catch so many fish, we come home sore at night.  It’s a blast and it lasts all summer long.  Bonitos feed alongside the kingfish and sometimes with wahoo or blackfin tuna.  When the bonitos are around, the action is always fierce.

Night Anchor Fishing

The action on the day drift fishing trips has been good, but the night fishing offers a different style of fishing;  snapper anchor fishing.  Anchor fishing and chumming has been one of my favorite types of fishing since I was a kid.  The chum brings fish in from a long way away and once the chum has been working for a while, the action heats up.  We target snapper of all species; yellowtail, mangrove, lane, mutton, vermillion and any other kind of delicious red snapper down there.  Sometimes we’ll catch something out of the ordinary such as a cobia or big grouper.  I guess I enjoy night anchor fishing because whenever you get a bite, it could be literally anything.  You never know till you catch it. 

Offshore Mahi-Mahi Fishing

June is best month for offshore mahi-mahi fishing.  It is during this and next month when the ocean calms down, heats up and the big piles of sargasm weed stack up.  This is prime conditions for big schools of mahi-mahi.  Mahi-mahi are voracious eaters.  They can grow to over 20 pounds in the first year, but most of the ones we catch in the summer are 5-8 pounders.  June is a great month for finding schools of 30-50 fish congregated together.  Find a school like that and you’re in for an unforgettable fishing experience.  Try the Wednesday all day dolphin trip or a sportfishing charter for an offshore dolphin trip.

It was a beautiful night on the Friday Night Swordfishing Trip this week.  The weather was superb, and the fishing wasn’t half bad either.  We started off trolling offshore, out to swordfish grounds.  We hooked into and caught one small dolphin on the way offshore.  It was a little 5 or 6 pounder.  Captain Adam found a nice little color change offshore.  It’s still daylight out till almost 9 PM these days, and the days are getting longer.  Captain Adam and his mate Josh assisted everyone with getting their lines and buoys set. 

It wasn’t long before we got the first bite.  It ate the flat line, the one bait we had only 30 feet off the back of the boat.  It wasn’t a big swordfish, but a swordfish none-the-less.  We caught him in about 20 minutes.  It was strong for such a small one.  We had him on our closest line, which was also our lightest tackle rod accordingly.   The fish was almost legal, only an inch short.  We pulled the fish up and released him. 

We didn’t have to bring any of the other lines in.  The fish stayed remarkably clear of everything else we had out there.  We got our second fish on about and hour later.  This one bit the mid depth bait, which was baited with a tinker mackeral.  This fish seemed much bigger and fought for a good 20-30 minutes.  This second swordfish was plenty big enough to bring in.  We fished for a couple more hours, but besides a few slashed squids, we never got another decent bite.  Any swordfishing trip when you go 2 for 2 is a good trip.  Thanks to everyone that came and we look forward to fishing with you again. 

P.S.  Just to let everyone know, we are running an 8 hour Snapper fishing anchor trip this Friday night, May 15 from 8PM - 4 AM, if anyone wants to come.  The price is only $50 per person, and includes everything.  We still have plenty of open spots and the snapper fishing has been very good for us lately.  This is the first 8 hour open boat snapper fishing trip we’ve run on the Catch My Drift.  It may be a new monthly trip for us.  Sea you out there.

May is here and what a beautiful month.  The action in Fort Lauderdale this month has been on the reef.  Sure, there are some dolphin biting here and there offshore, but they have been few and far between.  Kingfish are biting like mad just a mile our shore, so we haven’t ventured out too much farther than that.  My dad always said to me, “The first rule of fishing is never leave fish to find fish.”  Kingfishing in on the 80′-150′ reefs has been action packed this month, and I’m looking forward to an action packed summer as well.  Our 4 hour drift fishing trips are bringing in some very nice catches of king mackerals(kingfish), and snappers.  There have been a few mahi-mahi and groupers mixed in also. 

From now until the end of September, is about the best few months for our drift fishing boat, the Catch My Drift.  The kingfish, bonito and tuna drive a major migration through our waters this season.  Snappers too, are thick in the late spring and early summer with the mutton and mangrove spawn.  There’s always a variety of fish to be caught on all our different fishing trips.

The sportfishing boats are getting their fair share of the reef action too.  The sportfishing boats, by dragging live baits around the reef, are catching some humongous kingfish.  King fish average 4-10 pounds, but can actually grow to over 50 pounds.  We don’t get the kingfish over 30 pounds very often, but it’s awesome when we do.  This week, our sportfishing boats have coming in with a few awesome catches of giant kingfish.  And of coarse, whenever you are deep sea fishing in kingfish waters, you also have good chances at sailfish, tuna and wahoo.  A few big wahoos have hit the docks this week also. 

Well, that’s the fishing report for this week.  Great fishing on all the boats.  Fishing is actually pretty easy when the fish are biting this good.  Thanks for reading my fishing report and I hope to sea you all out there fishing.  Tight lines.

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. 

We had one helluva sport fishing trip out of Fort Lauderdale the other day.  There have been some big fish showing up, so we were expecting just about anything that day.  As we headed out the inlet to fishing grounds, I noticed a gorgeous current edge in about 350′ of water.  There was a rather strong breeze that day, so I set out 2 of our heavy wind kites and suspended some fresh live goggle eyes from them.  There have been some gigantic sharks around, so we thought it a good idea to send a rigged bloody tuna down to the bottom.  With our baits set we sat back, kept watch and waited patiently for a big game fish to show himself. 

An hour went by and still not a bite.  The water looked just too perfect for us to not have caught anything by now.  Joey was in the cockpit and yelled up, “Let’s try something else, Cap’n.”  I shouted back, “Let’s give it a few more minutes.  He’ll jump on there.”  Not a half second past by when I saw the fish.  I screamed, “Left Long!!  There he is!!”  It was a giant mahi-mahi, a bull.   The bull ate the goggle eye and swam towards one of the others.  Off the right rigger I caught sight of another dolphin fish eating the right short bait.  “Another on the right short!”, I said.   Joey and the anglers reacted quickly and hooked into both dolphins.  The bigger dolphin looked unusually large.

We had been fighting both fish for 35 minutes when the cow came within gaffing range.  Joey reached out and struck the cow dolphin with the boat gaff.  As he pulled the fish over the gunwale of the Big Game, the fish went crazy and put on quite a scuffle in the cockpit.  A few whacks with the fish bat solved that right quick.    Our other angler was still engaged with the bull, which had taken some long runs and by now a good way from the boat.  With only one fish to contend with now, we could go after the fish with the boat a bit better. 

Backing down hard with the Big Game, we finally got into range of the big bull.  Looking down from the boat, into the water, we could tell this was a monster game fish.  The big mahi used his tall, narrow head as if it were a keel and stayed obstinately parallel and a steady distance from the boat.  The power of this fish was amazing. 

By this point, the fish was spent and so was the fisherman who was fighting the brute.  The fish came within gaff range and Joey reached out and stuck him.  We were heroes.  It was an exceptional day of fishing.  One that will not be forgot.  Thanks for reading my fish story.

-Written by Capt. Rod Roydhouse 

We’ve gone out one some incredible fishing trips this past week.  Mahi-mahi, sailfish, sharks, kingfish, barracuda, you name it and we’ve caught it.  There’s an abundance of big game fish around in South Florida waters this month.  Below is a letter written in by some of our customers last week.  They chartered us for 2 days and they caught all kinds of cool fish on their trip.  I’ll post the letter with some of the photos they sent me.  Sorry I can’t post them all, there’s not enough room.  Thanks for the kind words guys and thanks for all the photos. 

      We just returned home to Toledo Ohio and went through the pictures we got on a recent trip with Captain Adam and Rod. We had a great time on 2 day trips on the private charter. Adam had asked us to send some of the pictures we got for you to post. I have been out with Adam several times now and with Joe and Rod and want to personally thank these guys, we had a great time and these guys made it even better. We caught 12 snapper, a large rainbow runner, an Albaco, a 75 pound Amberjack, 2 sailfish, a 9′ hammer head, 7 dolphin and a bunch of other fish in just 2 days. It couldn’t have been any better. I was down in January and went out with my wife and kids, this being the first trip for my 2 kids. We caught 2 sailfish, a dolphin and a 5 foot amberjack in

5 hours. ( you have several pictures of my son Joey with his amberjack on your site). Anyway here several pictures from this most recent trip with myself and 3 friends that came down there just to fish with your crew. (the group was Tom peternel, Brian Christen, Mike Stevens and Joe Dzierwa). Thanks again and good luck, see you later in the year.