Billfish Bonanza off Ft. Lauderdale

The sailfish are snapping this week. All the charter boats in town caught multiple sails this week during the cold weather front that we had. Boats were seeing double, triple, even quadruple hookups on one of the best sailfish snaps we've had this year. Whether you were trolling, live baiting, or kite fishing, if you were out on the water this week, you probably caught a sailfish. It was a great week. My boats best day was 6 sails(combined morning and afternoons fish), and several other fish lost. It was a lively ocean out there too. I saw a lot of free jumpers in the 150'-200' of water marks. This week was probably one of the best weeks of sailfishing we've had this year, I hope it keeps up.

Another awesome fish we caught was another big eye thresher shark. Our second this year. Always a cool fish. We fought him for about an hour and a half. Thought it was gonna be a hammerhead shark by the way he was fighting. Threshers normally stay straight up and down on you the entire fight, but this fish was all over the plave. We got him up, he was still pretty frisky. He didn't cooperate for us very nicely next to the boat when we were trying to get a measurement, so in the interest of keeping the fish as lively as possible, we guess-timated him at 128 inches. The mate took a nice slap to the face with the tip of his tail. Knocked him on his ass, and gave him a pretty good scrape across his cheek. Could have been worse if the fish got a better piece of him. I've heard stories of thresher sharks breaking bones with that 6 foot long tail. The fish swam away nicely, with a little extra piece of jewelry, a 12.0 lip ring

We didn't have enough reservations for the Friday night swordfishing trip this week, so unfortunately we didn't make it out for that charter. It looks like we'll have plenty to make it out this Friday though, so hopefully in a couple days I'll have a nice swordfish report for y'all.

Amberjacks are showing up on the deep shipwrecks now in good numbers. Looks like its going to be a good year for them also. We caught a 52 lb. warsaw grouper this week while shark fishing. He ate a whole 10 lb. bonito which gave him a little indigestion. Warsw grouper are cool fish to catch, but they are a pain to steak out. By the time im done cleaning one of them, my shirt is ruined beyond redemption.

Still haven't spent any time offshore this week. The fishing inshore has been too good for me to head out there. On the radio I heard of a couple blue marlins caught, and a few wahoo. I hope this cold weather keeps up for us, cause the fishing is pretty dang good right now. Hope to see ya all out there this week and good luck to everyone.

Capt. Andy Roydhouse
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