There's been a lot of action out of Fort Lauderdale this month. The kingfish are biting, tunas are schooling and the sailfish are starting to show up as well. The real story is how good the mahi-mahi have started to show up in South Florida. Mahi-mahi are biting excellent, both inshore and offshore. Most of the mahi-mahi have been in the 4-8 pound range, travelling in schools of 6-10 fish. Trolling has been very productive for them, but even the drift fishing boats have been catching them pretty good out there. The main reason for the great mahi-mahi bite is all the debris we are finding floating around offshore. We've been finding boards, logs and trees floating around, and everything we find out there seems to have a few mahi-mahi or a hungry wahoo swimming around it.
On the reefs, the kingfish have finally showed up in good numbers. We've been waiting all summer for the kingfish to start biting and they finally have. The drift fishing boats have limited out on kingfish a few times this week and the sportfishing charter boats have been coming in with their limit almost every day. Mixed in with the kings is the occasional blackfin tuna, sailfish and a few cobias are around as well. I attribute a lot of the action to the multitude of baitfish that I've noticed on the ocean. Lots of sardines, pilchards and herring have been seen out there, and when there's baitfish, the big game predators are usually not far behind.
Sailfish season is here! October is generally the start of sailfish season, and we've already caught a few. As the weather starts to cool down a little, more and more sailfish should start coming up to the surface to feed. On my fishing charters, I've been seeing some free jumping sailfish on the reef; a very positive omen for the upcoming sailfish season. The sailfish season was awesome last year and it lasted late into February for us in 2007/2008. I have a feeling that this year, sailfish will be biting even better than last year. It's a great time to get out there and do some deep sea fishing. Sea ya later.
