Fort Lauderdale’s absolute best time of the year for offshore fishing is March through May. This month, the big fish start showing up around the wrecks and pelagic fish like dolphin, tuna and wahoo are on the Gulf Stream’s edge. With the start of the big game shark migration, we can catch sharks 6 to 10 feet long every day. 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 to 60 pound reef donkey. Big grouper, cobia, barracuda and snapper live around these shipwrecks and can be caught here too, but you rarely get your bait past the giant amberjacks.
Every March, when the wind blows hard out of the east for a few days in a row, the dolphin fishing goes off the chain. Big bull dolphin and their cows, 20 pounds and bigger come in on the reef to spawn. 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 and then it’s over.
March is also a great month for drift fishing. Blackfin tunas and kingfish are the main species on the reef these days. You can see schools of blackfin tuna on the top of the water, feeding. They tear up the top of the water with commotion as they annihilate pods of baitfish. When we’re drifting and schools of baitfish are following the boat, the tunas sometimes come right up next to the boat, busting the surface. Butterfly, whip and natural feather jigs work very well for these schoolie blackfins. The kingfish in March will be mostly 5 to 8 pounds with a few big smokers caught here and there.
Anchor fishing at night is not too shabby either. Yellowtails are starting to fatten up and are moving out deeper to the second and third reefs. The best yellowtail bite is now in 65 to 100 feet of water. Fishing the deeper water, we’re catching a lot more variety too. Of course, red, black and gag groupers are biting great, but they are all out of season. We call them happy groupers, but they sure are fun to catch. Mangrove and mutton snappers are mixed in and are biting pretty good. A few cobia are lurking the reefs and biting on the night trips too. Lots of barracuda and sharks are about, so you better wind your snapper in quick or the tax man is going to get them.
Have fun fishing everyone and good luck. This is a great time of year for fishing in Fort Lauderdale.
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
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