October is a great month for drift fishing in Fort Lauderdale, especially for kingfish. The kingfish bite gets really good this month as the waters finally begin to cool off. The best kingfish bite tends to be early morning or late in the afternoon. One hot tip is to throw out a surface trolling bait on the way out to fishing grounds. It’s not drift fishing, but the boat is traveling over all that fishable area to get to their spot, so you may as well throw out a rigged ballyhoo or strip bait. The captain will slow down if you get a hook up. For drifting, a dead ballyhoo or sardine works well. A whip jig baited with ballyhoo can get a good bite on a kingfish, wahoo or blackfin tuna. October is a good month for wahoo and blackfin tuna. Cobia, a fish we don’t catch that often out here will also begin showing up this month. Cobia average 30-40 pounds, some bigger, and are a great eating fish, making them highly prized. Cobia often suddenly swim right up to the boat and get caught by the fastest angler ready to pitch a bait to him. The first few schools of cobia come through this month, so be ready.
At night, the reef comes alive with snappers. Yellowtail, mangrove, lane, schoolmaster, dog tooth, mahogany and mutton snappers are abundant this month and come out of the woodwork to feed once it gets dark. Most of them being 1-2 pounds in weight, anchor fishing and chumming the water is best method to target these pan-sized bottom fish. Squid and ballyhoo chunks work good fishing heavy on the bottom, or use silversides with an extra light sinker to drift your bait back in the chum-line for yellowtail. Mutton snapper, the biggest of all the snappers we catch can get 10-14 pounds, a few of them being caught every night on the bottom. A variety of red/black grouper, cobia and sharks are also caught frequently on the night anchor trips.
There’s a good variety of fish to be caught this month drift fishing off Fort Lauderdale. Good luck to everyone fishing. I’ll sea ya on the water!
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
Fishing Headquarters
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