Fishing Fort Lauderdale Happy Day Today

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Fishing report for the charter boat “Happy Day Today” 46’ Hatteras sport fish based out of Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316 in the Bahia Mar Charter Fleet. We fished a morning shared charter of two couples who were Rudy and his son Adam, Diego and his girlfriend Maria from Uruguay.
We started out the charter with getting live Big Eye Scads also known asGoggleyes. The goal was to kite fish and target the pelagic species such as Sailfish, Mahi, King Mackerel and Wahoo. We left the inlet at Port Everglades and our destination was about 6 miles North from the Fort Lauderdale Sea Buoy using the fishing method of live bait kite fishing with the Gogs. The decision to fish this area was based on a couple factors. This time of the year (October, November and December) we prefer to fish areas that are a little deeper than when fishing Fort Lauderdale in (January through May). The depth of the area we are fishing is about 150’ to 175’ of water. Within a couple mile stretch the bottom structure is favorable for pelagic species. The currents that flow over the sunken wrecks, rock piles and reel line upwell and will create an eddy or rip current as well as the tide pushes bait along the reel line offshore Fort Lauderdale. The current raises the bait fish which attract the Mahi, Wahoo, Kings and Sailfish.
Coming out of the inlet, we set our normal spread of lines trolling two deep lines which are planners with Sea Witches and Bonito strip baits. On the surface, we fish three naked Ballyhoo and two Mold Craft soft chugger heads. Within 15 minutes of lines in the water, we had a nice King Mackerel on the deep planner Sea Witch. Rudy’s son Adam did a great job as an angler and caught the 10 to 12 pound King Mackerel. After catching the King, we continued trolling to the North and had a couple miles to go. In that time we got out our gear for live bait fishing, the kite rods, TLD 25 Shimmano reels with 30 pound main line and 60 pound leaders 8’ long with a 12” wire trace. By using the wire trace, any fish with teeth will not bite through the wire. About 20 minutes later, Diego caught a Bonito which we kept for bait. Bonitos make great shark baits as well as we make strips out of the sides of the Bonito.
We arrived at the area in 155’ of water on the reef structure. The beach or coast line is located 3 miles offshore this location when we are fishing in Fort Lauderdale. We brought in the trolling gear and started to set out the live baits totaling 5, four baits from the kite and one off the rigger, we used two kites, one kicked off to the right and one kicked off to the left which gives the baits a nice spread. We fished two live Gogs off each kite and one live bait off the rigger line with a 2 ounce lead to get the bait down a little bit in the water column.
Within 30 minutes of kite fishing, the right long Goggleye started getting nervous and moving erratic on the surface of the water. We could see that the bait was getting chased which turned out to be a Sailfish. We fed the Sail and were hooked up. Rudy was up next as an angler and he fought the Sailfish. Since we practice catch and release, I encourage our customers to get their cameras out, take photos while the fish is in the water and if the fish is not too erratic, I will grab the bill of the Sailfish and bring the fish in the boat. First we get the hook out of the mouth, snap off a couple photos to let the fish swim away to be caught again.
The Sailfish Rudy caught was a juvenile fish, this juvenile Sail was around 3’ long and we guestimate that this fish could not be more than 6 months old. Around 99% of the Sailfish we catch range between 72” to 96” tip to tip. Tip to tip is the front of the bill to the end of the fishes tail. After the Sail catch, it ended our half day morning charter fishing offshore Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316.
If interested in discussing a fishing charter with Capt. Zsak, please give a call or send an email as we are happy to assist with any questions, availability or booking a charter