Nice warsaw grouper caught deep sea fishing in Ft Lauderdale.

Today was another great deep sea fishing day when we caught an over 60 pound warsaw grouper.  What a beast, this fish was a monster.  We thought we had on a huge amberjack or perhaps a shark, this thing was fighting so hard.  When we started to get him near the surface, the fighting started to lessen and the line started planning upwards.  We knew it was a big grouper.  When the fish came up, he was fully bloated with all the gas from rising so quickly.  The same thing would happen to a diver if he rose from such a depth rapidly without giving his body time to expel all that extra volume of gasses.  Groupers seem to be more prone to the “bends” than other fish we catch from that depth.  Amberjacks for instance, can fight the entire way up to the top without getting a buildup of gasses.

Warsaw grouper floating after being caught

This is a great season for groupers, and a great year for them as well.  We’re catching good numbers of black, gag, red and warsaw groupers this year.  This week alone, we’ve caught 3 monster warsaw groupers, 2 big blacks, 2 gag groupers and I don’t know how many red groupers (on our daytime drift and night anchor fishing trips).  Our drift fishing trips are also crushing the yellowtail snappers out there lately.  Fort Lauderdale bottom fishing is great with a lot of variety on grouper, snappers, a few cobia and sharks of all species. A lot of good bottom fishing action these days.  Good luck fishing everyone, I’ll sea ya on the water!

Black grouper caught deep sea fishing in Ft Lauderdale

Nice catch of yellowtail snapper ready to be cleaned.

Great snapper fishing this week on our Drift Fishing charters.  The yellowtail snapper are biting really good in 40-80ft of water.  Over the past several days we’re coming in with really good numbers of yellowtail snapper.  Yesterday’s trip caught 69 yellowtails, 49 keepers and 20 throw-backs.  The snappers are definitely the best action to be had fishing Fort Lauderdale right now.  The best rig is the chicken rig, which is a rig with 2-3 hooks tied in tandem and a sinker on the bottom.  You bait it up with chunks of squid or ballyhoo and drop down to the bottom.  When the bite is on, as soon as you hit bottom you’ll start getting nibbles.  You can catch yellowtail, mangroves, mutton snappers as well as the entire array of porgies, grunts and groupers.

36 pound blackfin tuna caught drift fishing in Fort Lauderdale

Lots of yellowtail snappers biting in Fort Lauderdale

Kingfish are kind of slow for the drift boats in Fort Lauderdale.  We’re catching 1 or 2 per trip, and they are nice size ones, but low numbers overall.  A few bonitos are beginning to show up as well.  In another month, they will be everywhere.  Blackfin tunas are biting surprisingly good in the past few days.  This morning’s trip caught a 36 pounder and several small ones.  A few other big tunas have been caught this week and a lot of small-medium sized ones.  Our Fort Lauderdale deep sea fishing charters on the drift boat are catching a lot of action so get out there if you can.  Sea ya on the water.

Nice catch of dolphin and wahoo on our sportfishing charter today

The dolphin are biting!!  Mahi-mahi dolphin are being caught in 100-200 feet of water, on and just outside the Fort Lauderdale reef.  Today and yesterday were both good days for catching these delectable gamefish.  We started out catching some fresh ballyhoo by tying up the mooring buoys and chumming them up.  When we had the ballyhoo chummed up well enough, we threw the net on them.  One net throw is enough for the whole day.  We went out to 100ft of water and started slow trolling the ballyhoos out of the outriggers.  Live ballyhoo drag well if you go slow and bump the boat in and out of gear.  This is a great way to catch sailfish, mahi-mahi and blackfin tuna.

It took about 45 minutes before we got our first bite.  We got a double header dolphin on the line and caught them both.  Put the baits out again and only a few minutes went by before we caught 2 more.  We also had a downrigger down with a live speedo mackerel as bait.  The wahoo hit the downrigger bait like a freight train.  He smoked the drag off the reel with 2 long runs.  After that he was spent and we fought him up in 15 minutes.  We ended the trip with 8 mahi-mahi and a nice wahoo.  We also missed a sailfish.  Dang it, the sailfish would have been awesome.  Dolphin are biting good in Ft Lauderdale on our fishing charters for several days now.  May and June are great months for dolphin fishing, so get out there if you can do some fishing.  Below is a picture of yesterday’s catch, another good dolphin fishing charter in Ft Lauderdale.

Nice dolphin catch on our fishing charter in Ft Lauderdale yesterday

Nice sailfish caught sportfishing in Fort Lauderdale on rainy day

The weather got crappy today… rainy, windy and rough.  Our charters still braved the rain and seas and came in with a great catch.  We were 3 for 4 on sailfish and we caught several blackfin tunas and bonitos.  Sailfishing gets really good with a falling barometer.  All the fish were caught by dragging live ballyhoo and speedos out of the outriggers between 100 and 300 feet of water, just south of the inlet in Fort Lauderdale. 

Nice amberjack caught deep dropping on a wreck

Sharks and amberjacks are also biting good in Fort Lauderdale.  Several very large hammerhead sharks were caught this week as well as a monster mako shark and several big duskys.  This is the tail end of shark fishing season in Fort Lauderdale, but they are still biting strong.  Even after the migrating sharks move past our waters, we’ll still have pretty decent shark fishing throughout the summer months.  Good luck fishing everyone.

Box full of snappers and groupers from last night's anchor fishing trip aboard the Catch My Drift.

Excellent action the past few nights on the night anchor fishing trips.  Yellowtails and mangrove snappers are biting exceptionally well, with some nice mutton snappers and groupers mixed in.  Last night, on the Saturday Night 6 hour anchor trip, we caught a boatload of snappers.  The action didn’t get started till about 11 o’clock, but when the bite turned on, the fish started hitting the deck.  June is generally the peak month of the year for night anchor fishing in Fort Lauderdale. 

Nice red grouper caught night fishing on the Catch My Drift

Groupers have been hit or miss lately, but they are down there.  Red groupers and black groupers are biting the best, but there are also the occasional gag or scamp grouper too.  The hind groupers, which are the strawberry groupers, rock hinds and coneys, also bite pretty regularly on the night anchor trip.  And of coarse grunts, which are very abundant on the bottom, also bite throughout the night and add to the action on the trip.  We caught 2 full 5-gallon buckets of grunts last night.  Grunts are in the sweet lip family of fish and are very good eating as well, they’re just small and hard to filet. 

Night fishing trip has been the best drift boat trip for action lately. We’re getting some kingfish, bonitos and blackfin tunas during the day trips, but if you want to get the best action, come out fishing at night. Good luck fishing everyone.

Flag yellowtail caught yellowtailing aboard the Catch My Drift

 

Nice mutton snapper caught with a ballyhoo plug on the bottom.

Nice catch of red snappers deep dropping off Fort Lauderdale

The fishing this week in Fort Lauderdale is great. A lot of action on the reefs and wrecks. Today, we went snapper fishing for a few hours and caught a whole bunch of red snappers. We caught all of these fish in 350ft of water, deep dropping with chicken rigs baited with squid and chunks of bonito. We were pulling them up 3-5 at a time. The snappers were ‘snappin’ as they say. Good fishing on the wrecks for big game too. The amberjacks are all over the wrecks and biting ferociously. This is the season when the big amberjacks come through and inhabit the wrecks. They are big too, some of them 40-60 pounds. Live baiting around the wrecks is all but a sure thing for a big amberjack bite.

Nice amberjack caught fishing a wreck in Ft Lauderdale

Nice grouper and snapper catch today on a sportfishing charter

There is a lot of activity fishing the Fort Lauderdale waters this week.  Sharks, sailfish, blackfin tuna and mahi-mahi are all biting on the outside edge of the reef.  Wrecks are also loaded up with good fish.  Today, we had some folks that wanted to go out and do some bottom fishing and get some fish they could take home to cook up.  So we went out and did some deep dropping around the 250-350ft shipwrecks.  The fish were biting.  We caught about 20 vermillion snappers, a couple jacks that we threw back and a couple nice size snowy groupers.  It was a good action trip.  Sportfishing and drift fishing trips are both coming in with good catches this week.  May is always a good month for fishing and this May is no exception.  For the next month or so, we should have the best fishing Fort Lauderdale has to offer, no matter what type of fish you’re after.  Let’s get out there and do some fishing while the fishing is good.

Nice sailfish caught drift fishing aboard the Catch My Drift

Drift fishing is going good this week.  A lot of action on the reef catching kingfish, bonitos, blackfin tunas, snappers and grouper.  The action always gets better for us this time of year.  There are schools of baitfish on the reefs and all around the wrecks right now, making plenty of food for bigger game fish to congregate.  Schools of blackfin tuna are patrolling the reef.  Several big blackfins and many small to medium ones are being caught drift fishing in 100-200ft of water.  A few sailfish are here and there as well, more than a few were caught this week. The kingfish bite is hit or miss.  On some days they bite good and we catch a bunch of them.  Other days, we can’t get a kingfish to save our lives.  Fortunately, if the kingfish aren’t biting, snappers and groupers on the bottom give us some good action.  Bonitos are beginning to show up for their big summer migration.  Just a few to start, but in a month or so, large schools of them will be biting. 

Coming in from fishing on the Catch My Drift

This morning’s drift fishing trip aboard the Catch My Drift was decent action.  We had 17 anglers on the boat and caught a sailfish (biggest fish of the day), 6 bonitos, a 20 pound kingfish, and about a dozen yellowtail snappers.  Capt Dale, our night fishing captain is reporting some very large mangrove snappers biting at night as well as a few big mutton snappers.  He says that the yellowtail bite is off and on, some nights really good and then some slow nights on the tails.  Grouper season just opened up and some red groupers are biting on both the day and the night trips.  We can finally keep them again.  We’re cathcing not more than 1 or 2 on a trip, but they are biting some.  We’re getting into the season when the drift fishing boats really shine and a lot of fish are caught.  Good luck fishing this week everyone.

Nice kingfish caught drift fishing in Fort Lauderdale

Monster hammerhead shark caught by Steve aboard the Out of the Blue

The sharks are snapping off Fort Lauderdale.  This year’s annual shark migration down our coastline is fully underway.  Hammerhead sharks, Fort Lauderdale’s most sought after game shark, are abundant in 350ft of water.  This is the depth where the Gulfstream waters meet with the cooler inland waters, and a temperature gradient is formed.  Sharks and other top predators like to patrol along this ‘current edge’ which is usually rich in prey.  April and May are the 2 best month for shark fishing in Fort Lauderdale.

Nice sportfishing charter in Fort Lauderdale with a big hammerhead shark release

This is a fishing trip the other day with Steve and family.  We went shark fishing and were lucky enough to catch  a monster hammerhead shark.  We didn’t just stop there.  We also caught some tunas, mackerels and a nice mahi-mahi.  Not bad for a half day fishing charter in Fort Lauderdale.  The sharks are really biting so if you want to catch a big one, NOW is the time to go.  Let’s go fishing!

Big Hammerhead shark in the water next to the boat

It took an hour and half to catch this big shark, on heavy gear.