Our Daily Fishing Reports

Paul and his whole family joined us today from Texas for an all day trip on the Miss Bonita 2. We purchased some live bait from Capt. Bud Randall as we made our way out of Port Everglades. We started out trolling the reef, zigzagging down the reef from 80 to 250 feet of water. Today, the current was screaming to the north. There was a distinctive blue edge running north to south. It went from dirty dark green water to almost cobalt purplish-blue. It was a gorgeous defined corridor for the fish to travel. As we got down south a bit, there were already a few boats catching some small dolphin. We pushed our way in and we were hooked up to a couple of small, peanut, throw-back mahi. We continued trolling south and started getting bitten by several king mackerel. We still trolled after putting about 4 mackerels in the boat, one of which was about 20 pounds, and got another high line bite which was a black fin tuna. The deep rod doubled over, screaming line, but unfortunately we didn’t get to see him. He chopped us off. He was either a wahoo or a large king mackerel. As we got further south, the edge was becoming even more pronounced. The current was smoking about 6 knots to the north.

We decided to pop the kites on this beautiful edge. We put 2 goggle eyes on the left kite and 2 on the right kite. The trap was set! This is where we could’ve used better luck! It only took about 5 minutes before the left long started freaking out and walking off to the south really fast. By the time I turned and saw what was going on, I yelled for Joey to jump the short bait over the long… “there’s another one!” It was too late. There was another huge Atlantic Sailfish desperately trying to eat the short bait that was tangled with the fish that was going south. Now everything “went south!” As the sailfish on the short was about to eat the bait, the sailfish on the long (with the tangled line) sprung the bait up out of the water and away from the 2nd sailfish. Moments later, the first fish shook his head and he was gone too. Unbelievable! The whole gang got to see both sailfish.

The wind was out of the south-east, the sun was behind us and the water was crystal clear. It was hard not to see what was going on. So, like anyone else would do, we reset hoping to get another bite. We waited and waited, but unfortunately, we never got another shot. The day was coming to an end we had to head home. On the way in, we stopped on the ledge in front of John Lloyd State Park and Port Everglades. Joey pinned a couple of big blue runners on the spinning rods while I slowly bumped them around on the ledge. On our second pass, we got an aggressive bite. A giant barracuda leaped about 6 feet out of the water. The fish came to eye level with me on the bridge. It was cool! Paul’s son, Chris, grabbed the rod as I pulled off of the ledge into deeper water. The giant ‘cuda made several runs and we finally got him in the boat for some pictures and safe release. This was the family’s first ‘cuda… pretty cool! We didn’t get to redeem ourselves after the first sailfish bite, but we wrapped up the end of the day on a great note with a high flying ‘cuda!

See you guys next year!