April is one fine month to go drift fishing in Fort Lauderdale. Kingfish are finally biting again after a few long months of inactivity. We’re catching them best on our morning trips, fishing in 70 to 140 feet of water, about a mile off Fort Lauderdale Beach. Sardines, ballyhoo or threadfin herring on a standard 3 hook drift boat rig work the best for kingfish. The 3 hook rig acts as a steel leader to keep their razor sharp teeth from biting through the line. Bonito are also mixed in along with some small blackfin tunas, African pompano and even scattered mahi mahi. On our afternoon trips, when the kingfish bite slacks off, we concentrate on the bottom for fish such as snapper, porgie, grunt, triggerfish and small jacks. This gets us good action and everyone goes home with some good eating fish for dinner.
Night fishing in April is also very good. Yellowtail, mangrove and mutton snappers make up the majority of the catch and are supplemented with an array of grunts and other small bottom fish. Yellowtail snapper start getting much bigger this time of year, much larger than the ones we catch in the winter months. Grouper, some of the largest fish that we catch on the drift boat, bite really well in April. However we can’t keep them for one more month. Grouper season opens back up for us on May 1. We can hardly wait. Still, our night trips continue to be the best trips for getting into the most action and bringing home the most fish. Look out for sharks as well this month. There are a lot of hungry sharks biting this month and if you don’t reel your snapper in fast enough, you’ll end up with nothing but a fish head.
Good luck to everyone drift fishing this month. I’ll sea ya on the water.
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
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