Sailfish caught on a sportfishing charter by Ben Getz

It’s the best time of the year to catch sailfish in Fort Lauderdale.  Every year, sailfish migrate down our coastline and for a couple months, take up residence in our baitfish-laden waters in 100-150ft.  This small stretch of water, just a mile to a mile and a half off our shore, has become affectionately known as “Sailfish Alley”.  The cooler weather gets the sailfish really chummed up.  This sailfish was caught by Ben Getz on a sportfishing charter.  You can see the Ft Lauderdale skyline in the background to see how close to shore we’re fishing.

Nice dolphin caught just a mile off the Fort Lauderdale beach.

The dolphin are also a main attraction this month.  This is one of the many dolphin we’ve caught over the past few weeks, ranging anywhere from 4 pounds up to 30 pounds.  There are a lot of schoolie dolphin scattered on the reefs right now.  Usually dolphin are an offshore fish, but the strong east winds push them in on the reefs into just 100ft of water.  Dolphin are great eating fish.  The restaurants call them mahi-mahi, the Hawaiian name, for obvious reasons.  Some days are better than others, but we’re averaging 4-6 dolphin per trip on our half day sportfishing charters this week.

Another big sailfish caught by this lucky angler fishing with Capt. Rod

With the sailfish and dolphin action so good, who could ask for more, but wahoo and tuna are also about and are frequently caught on our charters.  Black fin tunas like to school up, so when you find one, you’re probably in a school of them.  Often, we’ll hook into a single black fin tuna and then every line in our spread suddenly gets eaten and we’re fighting 6 fish at the same time.  Most black fin tunas this time of year are football sized, but we’re catching a couple up to 35 pounds too.  Some big wahoo, 15-35 pounds are out there biting as well.  This is an all-around good season for all our pelagic migratory fish.  It’s a great time of year to come fishing in Fort Lauderdale and catch some awesome game fish.

Dolphins and a nice mutton snapper caught on the drift boat, Catch My Drift