Nice catches this week on our drift and sport fishing charters. The action on the reef is red hot. Kingfish and tunas are biting really good and there are still some bonitos around as well. Summer is always the best season of the year for action in Ft Lauderdale. The bonito run , although starting to slow down a bit, has rejuvenated the abundance of fish on the reef. Every year, bonitos make a huge migration down our coastline in unimaginable numbers. Hundreds of thousands of bonitos flow into our reefs over the months of June through August. They bring with them tons of other species that travel with and feed on those bonitos. It really lights up our fishing and brings a lot of new fish into our waters.
Trolling is the best technique this time of year for catching the most fish. Our sportfishing charters are concentrating on trolling the reef. Main catches this month are kingfish, bonitos and blackfin tunas. Blackfin tunas are biting particularly well. We're catching them on dusters and natural feather baits. Blackfin tunas school up into large groups of fish. They are pretty easy to find. We spot them breaking the water when they are balling up schools of smaller baitfish. Most of them are football sized tunas, in the 5-10 pound range and sometimes a monster 30+ pounder. They all travel with the bonitos. Bonitos are actually tunas too. In fact, their true name is little tuny. Blackfin tunas are great eating (sushi, fish tacos, etc…), but bonitos are not. Bonitos are too muscular with too much blood to make them a good eating fish so they are a gamefish. They are one of the strongest fighting fish in the ocean pound for pound.
Since we are spending a good amount of our sportfishing charters trolling, we're also finding a few really big wahoo and barracudas. Wahoo bite best on the tide change especially right as the high tide reaches its peak and begins to recede. This is the witching hour for wahoo. The tide change is usually strongest on the full and new moons, making those days the best bet for wahoo. Barracuda and sailfish are two kinds of big game fish that are also possibilities to catch on our sportfishing charters. Although not the best time of year to catch sailfish (winter is the best season), there are some around this time of year… we've caught several this week.
For our drift fishing trips, snappers are biting very good. There are some big mangroves and a few mutton snappers biting on the day trips. A few keeper sized red groupers were caught over the past couple days. Lots of porgies are biting too and the usual catches of grunts, triggers and small jacks. Night trips are catching good numbers of yellowtail snappers and keeper mangroves. We sometimes get a mutton snapper or two on our night anchor trips as well. Basically, we're getting into the bigger snappers during the day trips and higher numbers of snappers (although smaller) on the night trips. Day trips are also getting a random kingfish or blackfin tuna while drift fishing as well. All in all, mostly good days this month fishing our drift boat trips.
Capt Billy holding a mutton and grouper aboard the Catch My Drift
This is an excellent month to get out there and come fishing. We have availability on most of our trips this upcoming week, so give us a call and Let's Go Fishing! I'll sea ya on the water,
Capt. Andy Roydhouse
www.FishHeadquarters.com
754-214-7863
