Fishing Report

Nice sailfish caught aboard the Big Game sportfishing boat

 

Drift Fishing Report

The Catch My Drift is coming in with some great catches this March.  With all the netting being shut down to the north of us, the kingfish have started biting like mad.  The kingfish are averaging 6-10 pounds, with an occassional smoker over 25 pounds mixed in.  The hot news is the March mahi-mahi are making their way into our waters.  Every March, we have a 2 week period when the mahi-mahi come right in on the reef.  They are big ones too, some up to 20+ pounds.  For 2 weeks, they come through in big numbers and just feed non-stop, it the best dolphin bite of the whole year.  Our reef drift fishing trips are catching mahi-mahi, fishing in only 100′ of water.  They come through in schools of 3-8 fish, and are hitting randomly throughout the day.  I expect the mahi-mahi to bite exceptionally well over the next couple weeks. 

Lots of Blackfin tuna biting in Ft Lauderdale

Blackfin tuna are still scattered throughout our reefs.  Blackfin tunas are schooling up and balling up schools of minnows on the top of the water.  We spot them when they are busting the surface, feeding on the balled up baits.  It’s fun to spot a school of tuna busting, set up on a drift just upcurrent of them, and drift over them and catch them one right after the other.  We had a trip where we landed 27 tunas a few days ago.  A few guys have been bringing out these deepwater butterfly jigs, which have been very effective.  With the mahi-mahi action going on and some blackfin tunas biting, some wahoo are being caught too.  Wahoo typically travel just below a school of mahi-mahi or blackfin tunas.  Whenever a school of mahi-mahi or blackfins are being caught, drop down an extra 30-40′ deeper for a shot at a wahoo bite.  The Catch My Drift has caught several big wahoos this week. 

Big wahoo caught aboard the Mary B III

Night fishing on the Catch My Drift is excellent this season too.  Mangrove snappers are biting particularly well, with some large yellowtails mixed in too.  On the Saturday Night Anchor trip this week we caught over 80 mangrove snappers alone, plus a nice mess of yellowtails and a few mutton snappers too.  We caught a few big cobia this week as well.  The drift fishing is getting really good for us.

Big cobia caught drift fishign on the Catch My Drift

Sport Fishing Report

The sportfishing is getting really exciting.  March is the beginning of the best sportfishing season for Ft Lauderdale.  The mahi-mahi, usually found offshore, are biting right on the reefs.  Capt. Paul caught 23 mahi-mahi yesterday on his 6 hour charter, nice job.  Trolling is working very well on the sportfishing trips because we can cover a lot of ground out there.  On the troll, we’re finding mahi-mahi, king mackerel, an occasional wahoo and we’re finding some schools of blackfin tunas also.  We’ve had some nice catches of blacfin tuna this week.  Trolling a little farther offshore has been good too for the mahi-mahi, in fact I should say some BIG mahi-mahi.  March, April and May is the time of year that we catch the big bull dolphins.  We usually catch a few over the next few months over 40 pounds.  This is the season for giants.

Captain Ashley posing with a big bull dolphin caught sportfishing in Ft Lauderdale

Wreck fishing is also starting to light up.  The big amberjacks are moving in and getting really aggressive.  Amberjacks can get up to 60 pounds and they are one of the strongest fish in the ocean.  Its a lot of fun to pull up to a shipwreck, hook on a live bait, quickly drop him to the bottom and be hooked up to a 30-50 pound fish instantly.  Its fun fishing this time of year.  An occasional grouper may bite too, but unfortunately groupers are out of season until May 1.  We caught a couple big cobias lately deep dropping around the shipwrecks too.  This is our best fishing season of the year here in Ft Lauderdale.  Good luck to everyone fishing out there, sea ya on the water.

Fishing this week is excellent out of Ft Lauderdale.  We are catching sailfish on just about every trip.  Winter is prime sailfish season here in Fort Lauderdale and this year is no exception.  We catch most of our sailfish by a technique that we call “kite fishing”.  Kite fishing is a method of fishing for sailfish where we fly fishing kites and dangle live baits from pressure release clips strung along the kite lines.  It keeps the bait swimming on the surface and is great for catching sailfish, mahi-mahi, tuna and any other surface feeding gamefish.  The mahi-mahi dolphin have been coming in on the reef and swarming the boat.  When this happens, we cast out pitch baits and bail them.  

Deep dropping around the Ft Lauderdale shipwrecks has been excellent for big bottom fish.  Yesterday, we went deep dropping on one of our deep shipwrecks, the ‘Molds’.  The wreck is in 220′ of water.  Rod dropped a live bonito to the bottom and instantly we were hooked up.  We fought the fish for 20 minutes until we reeled it up to the surface.  It was a giant warsaw grouper.  This is a great time fo year to fish around the wrecks for big groupers, cobia and amberjacks. 

Big wahoo are also out there to be caught.  A couple days ago, we were trolling out in 300′ of water and got a monster bite on the planer bait.  The fish came off instantly and when we wound in the bait, we saw we had been chopped off.  I grabbed a wire leader and hooked it up and we circled back around through the same area.  Another huge bite as we passed through the same spot, but this time the fish held on.  The fish smoked most of the line off the reel on the initial run.  After 30 minutes of pumping and winding on the fish, we got him to the boat.  Rod gaffed the fish when it came close enough and pulled it over the covering board.  The fish was a 58 pound wahoo, a fat fish just over 5 feet long.  Nice catch! 

Great fishing these days on our Fort Lauderdale sportfishing charters.  Big fish, good action and some good eating fish!  Sea you on the water. 

There’s a hot bite going on, trolling the edge of the gulfstream.  Sailfish season has begun and its starting off with a bang.  We’re getting a great early morning and late afternoon bite on the sailfish, and around that time of the day, we’re seeing a lot of free jumpers too.  Sailfish season begins now and lasts till around late February, when the bite finally tapers off.  We should have an excellent sailfish season this year.  We’re seeing a hot bite on the edge for wahoo too, some of them monsters.  On our last Wednesday All Day Dolphin Fishing Trip we caught 3 wahoos all at the same time… a triple header.  Wahoo love fast moving baits, so we’ve been trolling some high speed planers down deep with a skirted double hooked ballyhoo.  Wahooooo!  I love wahoo. 

The autumn mullet run is beginning now too.  I saw the first few schools coming down the beach this week.  Every year around this time, huge schools of mullet will migrate northward down our coast, just a few hundred yards off the beach.  You can see them quite clearly as a large black cloud moving through the water.  When I was a kid, my dad and I used to get to the beach early, before the life guards show up.  We’d cast out a weighted treble hook and snag a mullet.  Then we’d use that mullet as bait and cast it out in front of the schools.  It was a blast, we’d catch tarpon, small sharks, snook, and mutton snapper.  Of course, when the Ft Lauderdale life guards show up, they kick you out so you only get to fish for like an hour just after dawn.  Well, the mullet are beginning their migration down the coastline, and this will last for about 6 weeks. Our canals up and down the Ft Lauderdale intracoastal waterway will fill up with mullet too… easy fresh live bait for us! 

There’s always some big game fish following the mullet schools too.  While most of the mullet schools with stay in shallow waters, where it is safer, some mullet schools will inevitably wind up offshore.  Finding and fishing around an offshore school of mullet is exciting.  There could be a school of mahi-mahi swimming with them, picking them off one at a time.  There could be sailfish there, tuna underneath, wahoo around, sharks circling or even marlin lurking.  You never know what you may catch around one of these ‘pots of gold’ we find offshore fishing in Ft Lauderdale. 

Before I finish, I want to mention that wreck fishing / bottom fishing has also been excellent lately.  Amberjacks, the primary big game residents of the deepwater shipwrecks are biting good still.  A few cobia, who also frequently migrate along with the mullets are beginning to bite on the wrecks also.  And Warsaw groupers, the largest of the groupers that we catch regularly fishing in Ft Lauderdale are also biting great.  We’ve caught a lot of big Warsaw groupers this month, most of them 50-60 pounders.  Let me tell you, a 60 lb. stud grouper can put up a brutal fight.  It’s been some great fishing lately and we’re just getting into the fall fishing season with the mullet run.  Sea ya on the water.

-Capt. Andy Roydhouse

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. 

 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!