Slow Trolling Live Ballyhoo
Capt. David Zsak
June 2, 2020
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
Half day morning fishing charter aboard the "Happy Day Today" and Top Shot Fishing team based out of Fort Lauderdale, Fl.
We had nice conditions with clear skies and light Easterly winds blowing 10 to 12 mph.
As we are now in summer the temperature is heating up and by 9 in the morning it's already getting hot. Fortunately, when we are fishing offshore Fort Lauderdale the Easterly winds helps cool us off.
I started the morning catching live Ballyhoo. There is an anchorage where we can tie up to a mooring ball. With a chum bag and a Snapper line on the bottom we wait for the Ballyhoos to show up and usually is within 15 minutes. The deer line was active catching Yellow Tail Snappers. That was keeping us busy while waiting for the Ballyhoo to show up. We caught 4 Tails and on the 5th one bringing it up a shark came and ate the Snapper off the line. I quickly rigged up a circle hook shark bait and tossed it in the water and it didn't take long to hook this shark. We were able to get it close enough to see that it was a Lemon Shark and was about 6 feet long, as it was coming closer we pulled the hook. Which was fine because that's what we were going to do anyways.
And right on time the Ballyhoo showed up. My mate loaded up his cast net and threw the net on the bait and with plenty of bait we were on our way. I ran till we got out to 150' of water and fished two deep planners lines with 4 surface rigged Ballyhoo. As we were trolling I marked a few nice schools of fish on the sounder and worked the area. Almost like figure eight coming across the fish and we had a double header on the long and short planner and my anglers caught two nice King Mackerel. Kept on working the area catching another 4 more fish within a half mile of the first bite. I was ultimately searching for a good spot to fish the live baits.
I found clean blue water over a good reef structure with plenty of live fliers and bait in the area. It was in 180 feet on the deeper side of the drop off. This is where we decided to start live Ballyhoo fishing. We set out 5 live baits and slowly trolled these baits. It didn't take long before I saw the bill of a Sailfish out of the water trying to eat a bait. The first mate put the reel in free spool and fed the Sail, came tight and had him on. Great show as the Sail jumped 5 to 6 times each one big as the last. After a good fight and the anglers did a great job we got the fish along side the boat. We removed the hooks, pulled it in for a quick photo and released the Sailfish. After an great day fishing out of Fort Lauderdale it was time to head back to the dock.
To book a fishing charter with Capt. Zsak call us at 954-439-8106
Tight lines,
Capt. Dave Zsak
www.topshotfishing.com
954-439-8106
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