Good Snapper and Grouper Fishing on our Drift Fishing Trips
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
April 8, 2018
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
Our drift fishing trips have been pulling up quite a few nice snappers and groupers out there. April is the month where a lot of bottom fish begin showing up around our local shipwrecks. They show up this time of year to do their annual spawn and to feed. The reef and wrecks hold a lot of small baitfish, which is why the bigger bottom fish and also the predatory fish show up around the wrecks for the full buffet. This time of year, the wrecks are usually holding a bunch of big groupers, lots of snappers, roving patrols of big amberjacks and almaco jacks, and of course other odd-ball predator fish such as cobia, barracuda and sharks also lurk the outskirts of the wrecks.
On our daily drift fishing trips, we're catching a lot of snappers this time of year. Snappers are our main target out there and they are biting pretty good. Mutton snappers have been pretty decent size, on average larger than they were last year. Yellowtails and mangrove snappers are also biting in good numbers. I would say that the night anchor trip tends to catch the most snappers as snapper are nocturnal and they get much more brave once it gets dark.
Grouper are biting too, even though they are out of season. On our drift fishing trips, we catch a lot of red, black and sometimes even gag or scamp groupers. It is painful to be required to release a big grouper you've just caught. The regulations and conservation effort to repopulate the groupers is working though, so stick with it. I've haven't caught as many groupers as I have this year in many, many years. It's good to see the grouper population coming back for us. We don't have much time to wait either. May 1 we can start bringing them in again.
Good luck to everyone fishing this week. Our $40 drift fishing trips are catching a lot of action out there and some very decent size snappers and groupers mixed in. I'll sea ya on the water.
Capt. Andy Roydhouse
754-214-7873 cell
www.FishHeadquarters.com
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