Our weather post Hurricane Matthew has really been pretty good with mostly sunny skies and basically no showers. Our Fort Lauderdale fishing charters have been fished in an assortment of sea conditions with some off color water prevalent close to shore, but the fishing has been good with many fish being active in the darker water. We now have what is being billed as our 1st cool front of the season and this morning it was in the upper 60s here on the beach. It is very comfortable and as with most fronts the wind is beginning to blow a bit out of the Northeast.
Good numbers of Kings in water from 90 on out to 140 feet and some are of good size. All have been of legal size with no throwbacks due to being ?shorts?. We have also had a couple good bunches of Spanish Mackerel pushing down the beach heading to the south and these fish have also been of legal size. We often don’t spend much time on the Spanish when they are here, but we have had some kids and have of course spent more time with them as the kids do like the quick action when the Spanish are biting. And they seem to bite well most every time we can find them. Small blues mixed in also. The Spanish have also ventured into and well inside the rock jetties here in Ft. Lauderdale. Three times this past week we have seen schools of small Bonito all the way inside the inlet which is very unusual. There are huge numbers of these small Bonito out in the ocean right now. It’s nice to see them arrive here, and right on time, and the numbers are staggering. Hope it holds as we turned one of them into a nice live bait on one of our wrecks that netted an 18 pound Grouper. Also used another small Bonito to catch and release a nice fully grown Sailfish on the same charter.
We continue to see the Sailfish and this north wind should bring more into our area. Some Wahoo around and our charter coming in tomorrow has them on his list of targets so we will be looking for these fish around wrecks, edges and along the edge.
Vermillion Snapper are on the menu for sure and there are some Yellow Eye Snappers biting as well. A few more Mahi-Mahi moving through as well with the front. Barracudas are about to become protected here and with a size limit but this time of year they seem to be everywhere and taking our Sailfish and Kingfish baits regularly. They do deserve protection and will become very scattered once again shortly.
So both the fishing and the weather are pretty good right now. We do expect the seas to kick up a bit with this frontal system moving through, but not enough to stop us from heading offshore.
Tight lines and good fishing.
