It was rainy today in Ft Lauderdale, but we still went fishing. The fish are already so they don't care if it's raining. We went out and caught some live bonitos trolling around the buoy to start. Once we had about a dozen of them swimming in the well, we headed down south to the 'stink hole', the Hollywood sewer outfall. We set a spread of bonitos on the outriggers and one bait set deep on the downrigger. We started getting bites immediately. First pass by the sewer we got our 2 short baits chopped in half by something we didn't even get to see. As we came around on the sewer for second pass, the highline zinged off and a sailfish was jumping behind the boat. We fought the sail for a good 15 minutes and when we got him to about 20 feet away from the boat, he came up on a jump, did a head shake and shook the hook.
Circled back around for another pass by the sewer and got a slammer bite on the downrigger bait. Our downrigger was only a 20 pound spinning rod outfit, a Shimano 7500. The first run the fish took almost stripped the whole reel. There have been a lot of wahoo biting this week, so that's what I thought we were hooked into the whole fight. After 45 minutes of fighting, and this fish stayed deep and did some serious runs during the fight, we got the fight within gaffing range. It was a 37 pound kingfish, biggest one we've caught in months. We kept doing passes by the sewer and picked up a couple more kingfish in the 10 pound range and a big horse eye-jack (which I also thought was a wahoo coming up). I had wahoo on the brain with the low barometer and us pulling bonitos around. Good morning of fishing and glad to see some nice kingfish biting. Good luck and I'll sea ya on the water.
