The bite is on off the coast of Fort Lauderdale this month. May is about over and the June fish are here. Lots of schools of small dolphin are going to be showing up offshore and the tuna/wahoo bite is going to be on this summer. Right now though, there is some great action to be had off the reefs and wrecks of Ft. Lauderdale. Sailfish started snapping this week again, and what a great year on sailfish we’ve had already. This is perhaps the best sailfishing this late in the season I have ever seen off the South Florida coast. We aren’t getting the winter numbers of sailfish out there, but we’re still catching plenty. On 4 charters this week,we’ve caught double header sailfish by either trolling artificial lures or kite fishing. They are moving through and very aggressive.
Sailfish aren’t the only fishing biting out there on our deep sea fishing charters. Golden amberjacks are heavy on all the wrecks and you’ll be lucky if you can even get your bait to the bottom. These fish are big(40-60 pounds) and they are very, very aggressive. There are some larger groupers around the wrecks this time of year and also cobia, but its not often a big amberjack does not grab your bait first. The amberjacks are showing up on just about all the artificial reefs we have off Fort Lauderdale, but there are some really big ones on the wrecks deeper than 250 feet.
I almost had a really cool fish story to tell you all about on a daytime swordfishing charter we ran the other day. Rod and Adam went out and did a few daytime drops for swordfish the other dayy. The bait was down maybe 15 minutes and got slammed by a huge fish. After a 45 mintute fight, the fish got close enough, they guessed the weight of the fish at about 200 pounds. As soon as Rod grabbed the leader, the fish took off on a sick run which resulted in him pulling the hook. It was a heartbreaker for everyone aboard. They tried some more drops and a little fishing into the night, but no luck. It was almost an awesome trip.
There have been some smoker kingfish around on the reefs also. The drift fishing boats are coming in with king mackerals, blackfin tuna, and a lot of snappers. The drift fishing has been improving immensly from what it was like a month ago. Its been great action on all 3 trips, especially the night trip. Lots of yellowtails and mangrove snappers being caught on the night anchor trips. Most of them 1-3 pounds, but a few of the mangroves we’ve been catching lately are upwards of 5-6 pounds. Now thats a big mangrove snapper. A few 20+ pound kingfish have been brought in on the day fishing trips. I’m looking forward to a great summer.
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