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Fort Lauderdale, FL
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
April 17, 2007
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
200 lb. Swordfish Eaten by Huge mako Shark
It's been a while since I've written a report. We had a couple slow weeks when the fishing was mediocre, but it sure has picked up. This past week has been awesome fishing, both offshore and inshore.
Our Friday Night open boat swordfishing trip that we run every Friday night had a crazy trip this week. We hooked up to a really nice swordie. Fought him for about 20 minutes before getting him to the boat. Fish was a lot bigger than we though he was gonna be, about 200 lbs. Just as the fish got about 10 feet away from the boat, a 600-800 lb. mako shark came up and ate the back half of the fish away. Everyone aboard got to see it, it was sick. The make made the swordfish look like a kingfish by how big he was. We got the swordfish aboard and it had a gnarly chunk out of it. the potion we had left of the fish was 53", we guess he woulda been about a 72" forlength fish if it was whole, about a 200 pounder. Even though the fish got eaten, we fileted it up and all 15 people ont he boat went home with about 10 pounds of swordfish filets. We had 3 other fish on that night too, one fish for about 10 mins before it pulled the hook. It was an exciting and crazy night.
The Friday before that was just before the cold front we had, and it was blowing 25 knots out fo the NW. Big waves that night and we were the only boat out there. We caught one just legal fish and missed another fish, about an 80 pounder next to the boat. Swordfishing is red hot out in the gulfstream right now.
During the day, the sportfishing boats have been catching hammerhead sharks almost every day. I've never seen them bite as good and they are biting right now. Ever since they stopped longlining out of South florida, shark fishing has been coming back in awesome numbers, just like the swordfish.
A few sailfish this week were caught, but not on the live baits out of the kite as you would have thought. We've been catching them on our deep planer baits on drone spoons and seawitches. We've caught 4 sails this week while kignfish trolling.... weird?!?! Dolphin are coming into shallow water this week too. We've been hiting some really big ones(25-35 lbs.) in 150'-450' of water, just 1-2 miles offshore. Just one or two at a time, but some beauties. I caught a 62 lb. kingfish on Sunday(the day the winds were 30 miles an hour) on a surface rigged ballyhoo. Now that's a smoker king, and probably the biggest kingfish I've caught in over 5 years.
As if all that action wasn't enough, the shipwreck fishing has been great too. Giant amberjacks are biting on all the 200-300' shipwrecks, and the occasional gag or black grouper too. Haven't seen any warsaws caught this month yet, but they should be here anytime. Everything showed up a couple weeks late this year, but when they did show, they bit like mad-dogs. Great fishing out there right now, so if you can get a day off of work, get out there. Its a great time of year to call in sick . Till next week, good luck out there....
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