Sailfish season is here and it’s starting off with a bang! The sailfish this season are already biting voraciously and we’re catching numbers that we usually don’t see until the middle of winter. Kite fishing on the color change where the water turns from green to blue, just a mile offshore, is all but a sure thing for sailfish. This is a great time of year for big game action, with just about every trip catching one or more sailfish 6 to 8 feet in length. Sailfish are the most sought after gamefish in the ocean and people come from all around the world to take part in the great sailfishing that we have off the Fort Lauderdale coast. These sailfish migrate in a stretch of water between 100 to 250 feet deep that we call sailfish alley. Pop the kites in this zone with some lively goggle eyes and get ready for action. Kite fishing is a method of live baiting by suspending your baits from kites and keeping them directly on the surface. The baits struggle to swim down, creating fish in distress vibrations that attract big gamefish. It’s a very effective way to catch sailfish and other pelagic gamefish. When you are kite fishing, you can also catch tuna, dolphin, kingfish and big game sharks. All of these species are biting this month and can be caught out there.
Wreck fishing is a technique of fishing where we drop live or dead baits to the bottom next to a shipwreck, which also makes for good action this time of year. Warsaw grouper, one of the biggest groupers we catch in Fort Lauderdale, are stacking up and making home around shipwrecks and bottom structures. Warsaw groupers average upwards of 50 pounds, much larger than most groupers average. Black grouper, amberjack and cobia are other bottom fish that you may catch wreck fishing in October. Just a little further offshore, shark fishing can be good this month for some of the most exotic sharks we catch out here such as thresher and mako sharks. Last year, we caught two of the biggest thresher sharks I have ever seen in October.
There’s a great variety of fish to be caught this month, some of our biggest fish of the year. I love sailfish season! Tight lines and good fishing.
Capt. Rod Roydhouse
New Lattitude Sportfishing
(954) 707-2147
www.newlattitude.com