There are some big fish biting off Fort Lauderdale right now. These past few days the big game fish have really been biting for us. February is the beginning of our shark fishing season. The gulfstream current this time of year comes in pretty close to shore, only about 2-3 miles off. This time of year, from February till about June, we get a massive shark migration through these waters. Its a great time of year for fishing. There are all sorts of big game sharks swimming through our waters off Fort Lauderdale now… makos, thresher sharks, bull sharks, sand bar sharks, hammerheads and many others. This is my favorite time of year to fish. Migrating with the sharks is usually a lot of mackerel, mahi mahi, tuna, and bottom fish. The bottom fishing is stupendous in Feb-May. The local shipwrecks are teeming with golden amberjacks, big groupers, cobia, and mutton snappers. Its a great time of year to drop a live bait down to the bottom. You can come up with just about anything.
This week out sportfising, we’ve already caught a whole bunch of big game sharks. The shark train is coming through and we’ve caught hammerheads, sand bars and bull sharks this week. This one was caught by some guys on vacation down here in our lovely city of Fort Lauderdale. They got a great days fishing in and caught exactly what they were after… something bigger than they were. Congratulations guys on an awesome fish and a great fight. When we fish on the edge of the gulf stream, we typically like to put out a fishing kite, sometimes 2 fishing kites, and dangle some live baits out of it. It’s always important this time of year to dangle a big bait out of the kite too, in case Jaws shows up. We also put a couple big “soaking” baits down on the bottom. Usually it ends up being a nice fresh bloody bonito or a butterflied king mackeral. They are the baits of choice.
With that spread out, there isn’t much that you aren’t fishing for. You have live baits out in case a sailfish, tuna or mahi mahi shows up. Big bait out of the kite too for a big shark, sailfish or marlin. The bottom baits cover all your other possibilities. On that big bottom bait, I’ve come up with about every specie of big game shark you can think of, monster sting rays, huge grouper and amberjacks, and a ton of other stuff. My brother, while doing this type of fishing last year caught an 80 pound cubera snapper. Now thats a rare and awesome fish. Here is a couple photos of a beautiful sailfish that Capt. Adam released the other day. They caught it doing the kite fishing technique that I just described. This sailfish put on a great aerial display for us all. The fish jumped a dozen or more times during the battle to get him to the boat. We took these quick photos and released him to be caught another day. This fish will make a beautiful trophy. There’s been some awesome catches lately on our sportfishing charters. If you’ve been waiting for a good chance to go fishing, now is the best time of year to go. There’s a lot of big fish around off Fort Lauderdale. Sea ya out there…
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