Today was a great day in the morning. We had a three boat charter in the morning, we me running our 36 foot Invincible (Open Fisherman). After a quick stop on the way out to purchase a couple dozen live goggleyes, we headed six miles north of Port Everglades to 110 - 185 feet of water. There was a strong south current with a northeast wind of 20- 25 knots. It looked as good as it could get in Ft. Lauderdale for sailfish and mahi-mahi. It took 15 minutes for me two get two kites in the air and a few flat lines in the water. Twenty minutes went by and I yelled there’s a sailfish on the right long bait! I fed the fish and it came up jumping. David, one of my anglers, took the rod and began his 25 minute battle with the sailfish. Once we got it to the boat we tagged the fish and released it. For the next two hours we had four more bites; three mahi-mahi an one oceanic bonito. It was a lot of fun and it is always nice to fish with a fun group of people.
Oct 25, 2011
AM Trip
Well on the morning of the 25th we had four on a split. Two guys from Pennsylvania and a husband and wife from Wisconsin. They did not want to buy live baits so we got it done the old fashion way, trolling using fresh mullet strips with down planers and four surface baits. The kingfish were plentiful on the troll and we caught 5 kingfish, a few bonito and one mahi-mahi. We caught our last fish of the day as we were trolling south back to our home port. A sailfish bit a blue and white sea witch on the left rigger and promptly dumped a half spool of line off a Shimano TLD30. I was telling everybody in the cockpit to reel every thing up so we could chase the fish. Once everything was cleared, I backed down on the fish and we caught it in 20 minutes. Mike was happy because he said he could not reel any more! We got the sailfish into the boat, got some fantastic pictures, then tagged and released the fish in front of Fort Lauderdale.
PM Trip
On the afternoon trip, we were fishing right off the beach in Fort Lauderdale in 110 feet of water. We put up two kites with five lines in the water. Randy and his family have been deepsea fishing on almost every vacation since they are from Kentucky and there is not much deepsea fishing there. Our first few bites were kingfish and they chopped our baits in half. Then we sat there for two hours with no bites. I picked up, ran 6 miles to the north, and put the same spread back out. It took 30 minutes but we caught a few mahi –mahi. Thirty minutes after that we got the bite from the fish we wanted, a sailfish. Randy’s son jump into the fighting chair and began fighting the biggest fish he had ever caught in his life. It did not take very long because the fish did a lot of jumping around and wore it self out. We tagged the sailfish and turned him free to fight another day. We caught the fish in 150 feet of water using live bait. There is no doubt that live bait is the key to success this time of year. I cannot say it enough, this October has been some of the best fishing in Fort Lauderdale that I have ever seen.
