Andrew Roydhouse

Well, the fishing for the holiday Christmas season is going great. We're getting a ton of action on the sportfishing boats and the drift fishing boats are catching a ton of fish also. This week has been absolutely great. The shipwrecks that we fish out of Fort Lauderdale have been holding some monster fish. A few big amberjacks are being caught on live baits that we drop down for them. Most of the amberjacks have been around 20-30 pounds and some really big 40-50 pounders every now and then. With the amberjacks have been some big groupers mixed in as well. Today we caught a big 25 pound gag grouper on one of our really deep spots. That was a nice surprise for us. Capt. Erik caught and released a really nice 7' sailfish today; by far the biggest fish caught today. I've been hearing some good sailfish action around this past week and I think it's going to be good for a while longer. All in all, the sportfishing boats have been doing really good out there and almost every day coming in with a good catch. Fishing has been very good for them.

Drift fishing on the party boats has been very good as well. The reef fishing has been slow for kingfish, bonitos and tuna these past few weeks. Not a lot of action drifting for them. However, the snappers have been biting great. The inshore snappers like muttons, yellowtails and mangroves have been hitting good whenever we're inside of 200' of water. Whenever we set up deeper, like around our deep shipwrecks, the vermillion snappers are biting savagely. Sometimes we can't even get the bait to the bottom the fish are biting so good. On our Wednesday All Day Dolphin trip, the dolphin weren't biting at all, so we came in and fished for snappers. We loaded up! We ended up catching over 80 vermillion snappers and a whole bunch of other bottom critters. The night fishing anchor trip we do every night has been reporting good snapper fishing as well. They've been catching mostly yellowtails along with the occasional mutton snapper and some mangroves too. It's been a great week of fishing and I look forward to getting a few cold spells to really heat up the fishing. Sea ya'll on the water, it's going to be a great season of fort lauderdale fishing for us.

Fish Species: snapper, amberjack, dolphin and kingfish
Bait Used: dead ballyhoo and sardines and live blue runners
Tackle Used: 20-50# Penn Reels
Method Used: Bottom fishing
Water Depth: 80-200'
Water Temperature: 80's
Wind Direction: east
Wind Speed: 5 knots or less





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Andrew Roydhouse

About The Author: Captain Andrew Roydhouse

Company: Fishing Headquarters

Area Reporting: Fort Lauderdale South Florida

Bio: I am a 3rd generation fisherman out here off Ft. Lauderdale and have been fishing proffessionally all my life. My company, Fishing Headquarters, runs daily drift fishing trips, sportfishing privae and shared charters, night time swordfishing trips, and any other type of fishing you would like to try.

954-527-3460
Click Here For Past Fishing Reports by Captain Andrew Roydhouse