Half day morning fishing charter aboard the “Happy Day Today” and the Top Shot Fishing team based out of Fort Lauderdale, Fl. We had nice conditions with clear skies and light easterly winds, blowing 10 to 12 mph. As we are now in the summer, the temperature is heating up, and by 9 in the morning, it’s already getting hot. Fortunately, when we are fishing offshore Fort Lauderdale, the easterly winds help cool us off.
I started the morning catching live Ballyhoos by an anchorage where we can tie up to a mooring ball. With a chum bag and a Snapper line on the bottom, we waited for the Ballyhoos to show up, and they usually do within 15 minutes. The deep line was active catching Yellow Tail Snappers, which was keeping us busy while waiting for the Ballyhoos to show up. We caught 4 Yellow Tail Snappers and on the 5th one, as we were bringing the fish up, a Shark came and ate the Snapper off the line. I quickly rigged up a circle hook with Shark bait and tossed it in the water - it didn’t take long to hook this Shark. The angler was able to get it close enough to the boat to see that it was a Lemon Shark and was about 6 feet long. As it was coming closer to the boat, it pulled the hook, which was fine because that’s what we were going to do anyway.
And right on time, the Ballyhoos showed up. My mate loaded up his cast net and threw the net on the bait - with plenty of baits, we were now on our way. I ran the boat until we got out to 150 ft. of water and put out two deep planner lines with 4 surface rigged Ballyhoos. As we were trolling, I marked a few nice schools of fish on the sounder and worked the area. Almost like figure eight coming across the fish, we had a double header on the long and short planner, and the anglers caught two nice King Mackerel. I kept working the area, catching 4 more fish within a half mile of the first bite.
I found clean blue water over a good reef structure with plenty of live fliers and bait in the area. It was in 180 feet of water on the deeper side of the drop off. This is where we decided to start live Ballyhoo fishing. We set out 5 live baits and slowly trolled these baits. It didn’t take long before I saw the bill of a Sailfish out of the water trying to eat a bait. The first mate put the reel in free spool and fed the Sail, the line came tight and we had him on. Great show as the Sailfish jumped 5 to 6 times, each one higher than the last jump. The anglers did a great job bringing in the Sailfish, and after a good fight, they got the fish along the side of the boat. We removed the hooks, pulled the Sailfish in for a quick photo and released it.
After a great day fishing out of Fort Lauderdale, it was time to head back to the dock. For a successful and adventurous deep-sea fishing charter in Fort Lauderdale FL for Sailfish, Shark, Bonito, Mackerel, Swordfish, Snapper, Wahoo, Tuna, Mahi Mahi and Grouper, contact Captain Zsak. - 954-439-8106 or email us at captdz@gmail.com Website: www.topshotfishing.com.
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