The cooler temperatures of December are such a relief from the hot summer. With the cooler temperatures, fish like cobia that normally stay deep, rise to the surface and are the perfect big game quarry for the drift boats. Cobia patrol the reefs and are most often seen following behind slow moving marine creatures such as sea turtles, rays, big sharks and whales. In December, a common scenario is to have a school of cobia swim right up to the boat and follow slowly behind it. The fastest angler to get a bait pitched out there wins the fish. When I go drift fishing, I always keep a pitch bait ready, just in case a hungry dolphin or cobia swims up to the boat. Success happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Kingfish, tunas and snapper are also biting good on our drift fishing trips this month. Snapper will bite especially well this month and can be caught on the daytime drift or the night time anchor trips. Yellowtail, mangrove and mutton snapper are our main catches in less than 100 feet of water. Lots of mutton snappers are biting this year, many more than last year. They just raised the size limit on muttons and although we have to throw a higher percentage of them back, I can already see the big increase in their numbers. Deeper than 100 feet of water, we catch the vermillion snapper. Lots of variables come into play to successfully target vermillion including current, wind, drift speed and direction, depth and time of day. When the conditions are right, you can crush the vermillion snapper and everyone on the boat gets hooked up with every hook you have in the water. This is the last month for groupers until they close on January 1st. We’ve been catching a lot of larger sized black and red groupers the past few weeks. It’s great to see groupers starting to make a comeback.
Lots of good action to be had fishing the Fort Lauderdale reefs this month. Sea ya out there!
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
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