Shark Frenzy off Ft. Lauderdale

Its a feeding frenzy in Ft. Lauderdale this week. The sharks are here and in good numbers. Hammerheads, thresher sharks, makos, black tips, and bull sharks are all migrating throught the waters off Ft. Lauderdale beach right now. This week alone we've caught several big Hammerheads, 6'-9' in length. The past couple weeks have yeilded the elusive thresher shark on 3 occassions. And silky, also known as black tip sharks, have been biting any bait they can fit in their mouths.

One very cool day we had out here this week, we were shark fishing with our normal 2 kite spread with a deep bait and mid depth shark bait down. First kite bait out there gets eaten by a 4 foot silky shark. We put the baits back out and sit there for about an hour before we got the next bite. It was on the bottom rod. I saw the rod tweak over slightly , put the boat in gear and yelled, "bottom bait, there he is!" The mate ran over, started winding on it, and came tight. We fought a huge hammerhead for over an hour. It was about 9 and a 1/2 feet long. First fish our customer had ever caught in his whole life. So then the other guy on the boat with us says, "I really wanna catch one of those too." So we tell him, catching 1 big hammerhead is a feat, so don't be dissapointed if we don't get another shot on one. We put the baits back down. As we were putting out the first deep bait, which was to be the mid depth bait, the mate says to me that he's on the bottom. He had only been dropping the bait for about a minute, so there was no way he was on the bottom already. We were in 350' of water. So I put the boat in gear and yell, "wind on it!" We come tight on a big fish. We strap the guy into the chair and start fighting him. 15 minutes into the fight, the line starts stretching out away from the boat out to the top of the water, really fast. We look out there and up jumps a 7 foot mako shark. The fish came like 8 feet out of the water and did a belly flop. Beautiful fish when it came up. Stuck a flying gaff in him and threw him in the boat. 3 different species of sharks in 1 trip. What a cool day of fishing.

Now, not every day we had this week was as eventful as that one. We had a couple slow days of fishing here and there. Whenever your targeting the really big fish, your bound to get skunked a time or 2. But our overall average has been great. If the shark fishing has been slow, we've been switching over and hitting the deep shipwrecks at the end of the trip for a few drops, which has been yeilding some big amberjack and a grouper here and there.

Our Friday night swordfishing trip went out this week too. Sorry I haven't written a report about it in a while. We went out there and caught 2 swordfish this week. Both of them were small fish and we had to release them unfortunately. We had 4 or 5 other bites from swordfish that night though, so there were some fish around. We had a really nice fish on for about 5 minutes, but we pulled the hooks on him. ****!

The weathers been good and the big fish are biting so get out there if you can. This is my favorite time of year to fish, March through May. So if you got your own boat, use it! And if your smart and don't own your boat, come out on a charter with us! Till next week...
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