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Fort Lauderdale, FL
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
February 11, 2007
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
Monster Thresher Shark caught off Ft. Lauderdale
This was an interesting week fishing in Fort Lauderdale. Our Open Boat Friday Night Swordfish trip did pretty good. The Catch My Drift, the boat we run our Friday Night Swordfish trip on, has been on an awesome run of fish lately. The past few weeks we've caught multiple swordfish on many nights and a couple really huge ones. A 300 pounder was caught one Friday night this month, and another fish that was about 200 pounds, not to mention the night we caught 3 in the same trip. This week was slower than our past few weeks but we still caught a 51" forklength swordfish. The fish was about 60-70 pounds and it was the only one we caught that night.
The Out of the Blue caught the fish of the week yesterday on their morning charter. It was an 11 foot Big eye thresher shark. If you've never seen one of these up close, they are one of the coolest and stangest looking sharks in the ocean. They have an incredibly long tail, the tail being almost the length of the body of the fish. And their eye balls, the size of a leaque sized soft ball, are pure black and the pupil fills the entire orbit. They are irridescent purple when they come up out of the deep. Truely these fish look like alien space creatures.
Anyway, Capt. Erik Nelson was running this trip with his mate, John. They hooked up on the fish midway through their morning trip. It was caught on a whole 10 pound bonito, rigged on the bottom with a 4 pound lead weight to hold it down. The fish got hooked on the three hook rig with one hook in his jaw, and the other 2 hooks in his pectoral fin. A "fowl" hooked fish tends to fight twice as hard as a normally hooked fish. The angler, Angel, a first time shark fisherman from from Michigan, fought him for over 3 hours. It was a brutal fight. After the 3 hour battle, they brought the fish up along side the boat, got the measurements, and released him. The fish swam away strong with 2 flaps of the tail, but he looked tired. Capt. Erik said, "I don't know who was more tired, the fish or the angler". A very rare fish to catch no matter where you are in the world.
A couple other cool fish that have been caught this week were a 63 pound cobia, that I caught today. We were bottom fishing on a 200 foot wreck and what I thought was going to be a nice amberjack, turned out to be a huge cobia. When we gaffed him, the fish went ballistic and smashed into every object in the cockpit. The fish fought harder inside the boat than he did in the water. No one got hit by the fish, but it was a funny showing of the ole' cockpit shuffle.
A couple of wahoos have been caught this week, along with some scattered dolphin in 300-500' of water. A couple sailfish caught in the last couple of days also. Some good fishing out there for anyone who plans on going. Hope to see you out on the water, until next week...
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