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.

The deep sea fishing was great off Ft Lauderdale this week.  The drift boats have been catching kingfish after kingfish after kingfish.  There have been a lot of kingfish on the reef.  Action has been good on our morning and afternoon drift fishing trips.  The night tirp has been great for snappers of all species.  Yellowtails, mangorves and mutton snappers are what we are targeting on our night anchor trips, but we catch a million other types of bottom fish too.  Pretty much fishing in general has been great. Sportfishing trips are coming in with some really awesome big game fish this week.  Big kingfish, bull dolphin, wahoo, and a few tuna.  There have been some humongous sharks and a few sailfish caught this week as well.  Great fishing in Fort Lauderdale this week.

Our morning and afternoon drift fishing trips have been going out all week, despite the bad weather.  It’s been rainy, but otherwise pretty calm out on the ocean.  The fish are already wet, they don’t care if it’s raining!  We’ve been drifting in about 120′ of water and the kingfish action has been constant.  A few kingfish here and there and then we’ll get slammed by a big school of kingfish and then everyone is hooked up.  Those fishermen fishing with bottom fishing rigs have been catching a couple muttons and a few yellowtail.  But I always reccomend fishing with a kingfish rig on the daytime trip.  Kingfish are such fun to catch because take out fast runs on the drag and they are so much bigger than snappers.  If you want to snapper fish, go out on the night trip.  We anchor and target snappers so you will catch a lot more of them than drifting the reef.

The night fishing trips are coming in with some really good catches of snappers.  Yellowtails are biting pretty good, there are soom mangroves mixed in and the muttons are starting to bite good out there too.  Not every night is a mutton night, but we’ve had some good mutton snapper catches this week.  Some time in the next month, we’re going to have the big mutton spawn and we’re going to have some off the scale nights of mutton snapper fishing.  The mutton snappers alway spawn around the June full moon here in Fort Lauderdale, and in the past few years during the mutton spawn, we’ve limited out on mutton snappers.  And all big ones too.   

Sportfishing has been absolutely great.  I love fishing in May and June.  There’s so much life out there on the reefs.  Baitfish are all over the place.  Kingfish are piling through the baitfish schools and gorging themselves.  There are tunas, bonitos and mahi-mahi coming in on the reef.  Wahoo too are starting to show up good out there.  There’s a lot of action.  Kitefishing on the days with some wind is great too.  Monster sharks are migrating this month.  We’ve been getting some hammerhead sharks, thresher sharks, mako sharks and a couple bull sharks.  Kite fishing has also been great for sailfish.  We’ve had a hellatious spring fishing season.  Some very large bull dolphin coming in close to only 200′ of water.  That’s stuff you only see this time of year deep sea fishing off Fort Lauderdale.  All in all, exceptional fishing this month.  Tight lines everyone.  Sea ya on the water.  

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.

The kingfish have shown up off Ft Lauderdale, in a huge explosion of fish.  Kingfish of all sizes, 3 pounders to 25 pounders, are biting like mad in the 80′-150′ depths.  The drift fishing boat trips on the reef are coming in with big numbers of kingfish these days.  They are chasing the baitfish schools of sardines and herring that we’ve seen all over the reefs.

Then kingfish have been travelling the reef in large schools, made up of hundreds of fish.  We’ll be fishing a spot for a while with slow action, when POW!…  a huge school of kingfish will swim through our baits and eat every line we have over the side.  They say that ‘fishing’ is hours and hours of boredom, interrupted by a moment of panic.  It can be really exciting and fun.

Kingfish aren’t the only fish biting out there.  With the several days of east wind that’s been blowing out there, the mahi-mahi have been starting to show up on the reef as well.  Those boats drifting or trolling the reef are finding small pods of schoolie mahi-mahi.  The fish have been small in size, only 3-6 pounds, but that’s the size that’s common this time of year.  As we get into June, we’ll begin to see the huge schools of mahi-mahi offshore.

The night fishing has been slow on kingfish, but full of non-stop action.  The night anchor fishing has been awesome for snappers of all sorts, but especially yellowtail snappers.  Some big mangrove and mutton snapper are being caught also.  It takes a bit of time to get a good chum slick out there working for you.  But once you get a good bite started, as soon as your bait hits the bottom you’ll start getting hits.  All in all it’s turning into a great season and May looks like it will bring even more nice fish out way.  If you’ve got a free day and an itch to go fishing, check out one of our deep sea fishing trips and Let’s Go Fishing!  Sea you on the water… 

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.

Things are heating up in Fort Lauderdale.  March is the start of the spring fishing, and the fish are already biting off the chain.  Mahi-mahi are showing up in large numbers and even coming in close to the reef.  Wahoo are around if you take some time to fish for them.  Big amberjacks and groupers are biting atop the shipwrecks off our coast.  The kingfish are showing up on the reefs with a blackfin tuna or two.  We’re having some awesome deep sea fishing out there and we still have April and May ahead of us.  It’s going to be some off the scale fishing coming up.

We’ve waited for quite a while for the mahi-mahi to start showing up again for us, and finally they have returned.  Our Wednesday All day fishing trip has been caught some good size ones this week, and even the half day drift trips on the reef have run into a few schools of dolphin this week.  The big game sportfishing boats are catching the bigger dolphins though.  Wahoo, usually caught fishing offshore for mahi-mahi, are showing up pretty good.  On yesterday’s morning sportfishing charter, we went trolling offshore for mahi-mahi.  Adam caught a few small mahi-mahi, but we threw them back because they were pretty tiny.  We see a couple boats offshore of us, sitting in one spot for a while so we trolled over toward them.  They were fishing next to a floating piece of bamboo.  It looked like they were live baiting, so we kept our trolling spread out and trolled near the board.  On every pass we hooked into and caught a nice wahoo. 

The wreck fishing has been exceptionally good for us lately as well.  Amberjacks are on the wrecks in force and the spring always brings up the big ones.  If you’ve never fought an amberjack before, a 40-50 pounder will pull your arm off (at least it will feel like it).  Our sport fishing boat, the Big Game is pulling up monster amberjacks daily on the 200-250’ shipwrecks.  Occasionally a big grouper will bite also.  This photo shows the biggest grouper we’ve caught in a while.  Very nice fish guys!  All in all, there’s a lot of variety of fish biting out there right now and some monster fish to be caught.  Sea ya on the water.