Sorry I haven’t written a post in so long.  One of my engines broke down on me, so I’ve been working hard to get it fixed up right.  We got a new engine now, so everything should be great.  Anyway, today’s post is about a fishing trip for a couple young boys who went on one of our night anchor trips.  Captain Billy was at the helm and Josh Jr. and Jaime were in the cockpit with the fishermen.

It was a great night out there with a lot of action.  This trip was one of our 7:30 PM- 11:30 PM trips we run on the Catch My Drift.  It was our anchor fishing trip where we go out to the reef and anchor fish for yellowtail snappers and other reef fish.  It was a pretty nice night, only lightly choppy.  We anchored upcurrent of one of our shallow water spots in about 80′ of water.  The mates started chumming the water to get the fish hungry.  It worked.  Not soon after we stopped to fish did we start getting some good action. 

Lots of grunts, goggle eyes, squirrel fish, trigger fish and other throw back fish were caught.  We got into the blue runners later on in the night.  They were big ones too, 4-5 pounders.  Blue runners are normally not that large and they were biting crazy.  We probably released as many as we brought in.    The snappers were biting really good too.  We got into the vermillion snappers and caught a ton of them.  Vermillion snappers don’t normally bite this close to shore, but they did on this night.  Vermillion snappers are normally deeper water snappers.  We typically catch them in depth’s of 200-300′ of water.  Thats why catching them this night in only 80′ of water was so interesting. 

It was a good night of fishing and lots of action.  Sal Venuto Jr. and his friend Jonathan Cefalo, both boys age 12, were visiting from New York City and went fishing on our night trip aboard the Catch My Drift.  The boys sent me this nice email and all these photos.  Thanks for fishing with us guys and we look forward to having you back soon. 

The all day dolphin trip this week was just plain awesome.  We caught so many fish.  The fishermen were lucky enough to have Capt. Paul run the charter this week and wow did they get into the fish good today.  The ocean was gorgeous and it was actually cool out.  The summer heat is gone and the temperatures are a beautiful 75 degrees out this week.  The fish are migrating through Fort Lauderdale now too.  Baitfish are all over the reefs.  Mullet, flying fish, ballyhoo, sardines and threadfin herring are just a few of the different types of small fish we saw getting chased out of the water by some of the big game fish. 

We started out on the reefs because the past few days the dolphin have been in close.  We were only in about 100′-200′ of water.  Well, right away we started catching fish.  First school of dolphin we hit was underneath a big frigate bird.  Capt. Paul spotted the bird circling low to the water and trolled over close to it.  Frigate birds usually follow big game fish and wait for them to chase the small flying fish and stuff out of the water.  Thats when they swoop down and grab them up.  Whenever you see a frigate bird working tight circles low to the water, it usually means there is a big fish near.  Well, that theory panned out for us today because as soon as we got close with the boat we were hooked up with 2 big dolphins.

They ended up being the 2 biggest dolphins of the day.  One of them, the bull, probably weighed around 22 pounds and his cow probably weighed about 15.  The frigate bird moved off, so we put the baits back out and kept trolling.  It wasn’t long before we found some more birds working.  Again, as soon as we trolled close to the school we got hooked up.  We probably hit 5 or 6 schools that day and every school had at least a few fish in it.  I think we came in with about 20 dolphins.  Well, after the dolphins slowed down and quit hitting, we decided to go to the deep spots and try our luck at some bottom fishing.

Well the deep spots were working just as good as the dolphin were biting earlier.  The second we hit the bottom we were getting bites.  Snappers, snappers and more snappers.  We probably caught over 50 vermillion snappers today.  Well, by that time we had a full day of fishing done, so we headed in.  It took us about 2 and a half hours to filet all the fish we caught today.  Fileting the fish was a lot of work, but who cares when the fish are biting this good.  The last photo here is what the half day boat caught, and they did pretty good too.  The Fort Lauderdale deep sea fishing is awesome guys, so let’s get out there and do some fishing!

We are renting our slips at the marina on Las Olas Blvd and A1A, right next to the 7-11 store and only a 5 minute walk from the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show for the week of October 25-29.  This is the perfect spot to rent if you have multiple boats to display or possibly a booth in the show.  You can keep your boats at our slips and drive or walk your customers over to our slips to take them on a sea trial.  You can take the boats out and run your customers on a sea trial or bring them over and show them the boats.  Much, much cheaper than actually renting a slip at the boat show.  We have several slips available and its going to be first come, first serve for dockage.  If you are interested in a slip to rent for the International Boat show of Fort Lauderdale, call me at (754)214-7863 to discuss options at our dock and marina.  We are located on the S.W. corner of Las Olas Blvd  and A1A southbound, only 1 block away from the boat show itself.  Call for information or to view our dock slips.  Thanks,
Capt. Andy Roydhouse

On a Sidenote:  Fort Lauderdale Boat Show has asked us to be the shuttle boat for the boat show this year again, and we’ve accepted.  We’re going to be shuttling everyone from the Bahia Mar section of the boat show to the Fort Lauderdale Convention center and then to Pier 66 Hyatt and then back again- a continuous loop around the Fort Lauderdale intracoastal waterway.  Anyway, I’m looking for a sponser to put some banners up on the top rails of the Catch My Drift while we’re shuttling everyone around.  It’ll be great exposure, and seen by a totally marine related audience.  Last year, we transported around 5,000-6,000 people back and forth from the segments of the Boat Show, and we were seen by many more thousands more, probably tens of thousands of people.  If your interested in putting large display banners on the Catch My Drift during the boat show for some great advertising, call me at (754)214-7863 and I’ll give you all the info.  Thanks, and it should be a great show this year! 

We’re back in the water and taking trips again, but this was us in the boatyard this week.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.  We fixed a cutlass bearing that had given us a vibration in the starboard side of the boat.  We also straightened our shaft and took a few dings out of propeller.  It needed to be fixed and I’m glad we did it.  The transom is newly painted and looking beautiful.  We put new lettering on the back of the boat, compliments to our friends at Signs By Tommorrow.  If you need lettering done or a sign made, these guys are highly reccomended from us.  They do great work and great prices on their work- And it’s fast!  We also changed over our transducer which is the thing on the bottom of the boat that sends the signal to the bottom for our color fish finders.  Brand new and working better than ever, it gives us a crystal clear image of the ocean bottom, the fish below the boat and tells us the temperature of the water we’re fishing in.  Well, our was working sub-par before but now its working great and its all fixed.  Hopefully it will help us find the fish even more successfully now adays.  Anyway guys, good luck fishing with us out there, the boat is 100% and ready to catch some fish!

Hey guys, just trying to get the word out about this blog, so if you like reading it and can link to it, then Thanks a bunch.  This is a link to my Technorati blog page, just so I can get searched by their search spiders.  Also, I’d realy love it if anyone can link to my homepage http://www.fishheadquarters.com so I get some traffic for my fishing boat.  We’re located in Fort Lauderdale Florida and we go fishing every single day.  I try to keep my site as current as possible and I update my fishing report almost every day that we go fishing and post what we catch.  Send me a link if you can, it would really help me out a bunch.  Thanks everybody.

Also my blog is linked here:

http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/sports/fishing

Guys,

We are setting out on Saturday night to fish the swordfish tournament off Ft. Lauderdale.  It should be a great night and as you know, with the success of our Friday Night Swordfishing trips that we run every week, we’ve been having some good luck.  Capt. Adam is going to be running the trip and we’ve got a bunch of the guys that always fish the Friday night trip with us going out there to try their luck.  I think there is a couple spots open still for the trip if anyone wanted to get on with us.  I don’t know all the particulars of the trip, but if you are interested call Adam about it.  (954)295-3692  He’s handling the trip down to the nitty gritty, not me, so if you have any questions about the trip or if you want to get on it, call him up and ask.  He says he’s got a good shot in it and I for one would have to agree.  There aren’t many guys that swordfish half as much as he does, and the fish he’s been bringing in would have won a lot of the tournaments lately.  Anyway, wish us luck, we’ll be out Friday night on the open boat swordfish trip and then again on the Saturday night Sword fishing tournament.  Good luck to everybody fishing it, it should be a fun night.