My favorite time of the year has arrived! Fort Lauderdale’s absolute best season of the year for offshore fishing is MARCH, APRIL and MAY. March is the month when it all begins as the big fish start showing up around the wrecks. Pelagic fish like dolphin, tuna and wahoo are on the edge of the Gulfstream and the big game shark migration begins where we can catch big game sharks 6-10 feet long every day. It’s a great month for fishing because just about anything you try yields nice fish. Wreck fishing is one of my favorites because of the amberjack fishing. You can pull up to a wreck, drop a live bait and within a minute be hooked into a 40-60 pound reef donkey. Amberjacks are super aggressive and fight hard. If you get a bait anywhere near one, they inhale it. Big groupers, cobia, barracuda, snappers and more live around these shipwrecks and can be caught here too, but you rarely get your bait past the giant amberjacks. These fish are super strong and one of the strongest fighting fish you will ever pull against. I love ’em!
Every March, we have a few days when the wind blows hard out of the east for a few days in a row. When this happens, the dolphin fishing goes off the chain, right in on the reef and the inside edge of the Gulfstream. Big bull dolphin and cows, 20 pounds and larger come in on the reef to mate. They eat everything in sight and everybody catches a boatload of fish. This few day window of dolphin action always sneaks up on us and it lasts just as long as that hard east wind blows and then it’s over. For all of you big game fishermen out there, March is the beginning of the Fort Lauderdale shark migration, when tens of thousands of hammerheads, probably hundreds of thousands, migrate northward along our coast. They generally stay out in 350 feet and deeper in the warm Gulfstream current. We catch a lot of monster hammerheads and also some exotics such as thresher, mako and tiger sharks. These fish fight us for up to 2 hours on our heaviest gear. It’s a big game fisherman’s dream come true.
Get ready for some great fishing this month. Tight Lines.
Capt. Brett Magers
New Lattitude Sportfishing
(954) 707-2147
www.newlattitude.com