Good Bite Snapper Fishing On The $45 Drift Boat
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
February 19, 2019
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
Our drift fishing trips are catching a nice mixed bag of snappers this week. Lots of yellowtails, a few mangroves, tons of short muttons and a few keeper muttons. It's a good month for snapper fishing in Fort Lauderdale. The fish are here, but snappers are one of the smartest fish in the ocean to catch, so it takes some practice and patience to get them hooked up. Our drift boat fishes for snappers all year long, every single day of the year, so we experience the full gamut of snapper fishing, during the runs, the spawns, the slow times and both day and night fishing for them. This time of year, we get all the snappers... lanes, mangroves, muttons, yellowtails and vermillions. They all bite slightly differently and it takes a different 'touch' or 'feel' to get a hookup depending on which snapper you're dealing with. The only way to figure this out is to come out and fish, lots of hours, lots of misses and lots of successes.
The gear we use is pretty perfect for snapper fishing in shallow-medium deep water. Penn 4/0 reels, small hooks, short leaders and baits of squid and sardine chunks work best for most snapper species. Snapper just can't turn down a chunk of squid. When you want to try for mutton snappers, one of the craftiest snappers in the sea, I recommend bringing some fluorocarbon leader material, using a slightly longer leader and use a bally plug (a ballyhoo with it's head and tail cut off, making it into a streamline bait). You can use one or 2 hooks in your bait, depending if they are biting short or deep that day. Since they raised the size limit on muttons, we're catching so many more of them. However, many of them are exactly 17.5 inches, just shy of the legal size 18". It sucks to have throw them back, but it just means the fishing will be sustained and even better for us next year. There's always a big mutton down there though. They let the little muttons go first and then they come over and steal the bait from them. I told you they were smart.
Deepwater snapper such as vermillion snappers are perhaps the easiest snappers to catch. They aren't the brightest fish and are a snap to catch, even 2 at a time on a chicken rig. The only issue catching them is that you need the lightest of currents and lightest of winds, or you drift off the spot too quickly. And many tangles, with the multi hook rigs and dropping out so much line to get to the bottom make it a little frustrating. Still, in the right conditions, vermillion snapper fishing can be a lot of fun and lead to a lot of fish being caught.
Mangroves and yellowtails bite in day or night, but they are definitely the best night time snapper bite. We fish every single night of the week, with an extra long trip on Saturday night. Mangroves and yellowtails are our main targets. For yellowtails, flatlining a small bait (like a tiny jig with a silverside minnow bait) or a streamline chunk of ballyhoo or kingfish belly works best. Yellowtails aren't bottom snapper. They swim right up to behind the boat in the upper water columns when you chum and when they 'turn on', you can catch a lot of them. Mangoves are the bottom snapper at night. They can get much bigger then yellowtails and they like bigger chunks of bait including squid, sardine, threadfin and some people even bring shrimp as bait. All of these work good and can catch you some pretty good size mangrove snappers at night.
Snappers are one of my favorite fish to fish for because they are so challenging and they are far and away the best eating fish in the ocean. We're entering our best time of the year to catch snappers, from now until late Summer is our best snapper fishing season, so get out there if you can and hone your snapper catching skills. You can join in on our daily drift fishing trips during the day, or come on our anchor and chum trips at night. Trips cost $45 and include everything for fishing. Good luck out there fishing everyone. I'll sea ya on the water!
Capt. Andy Roydhouse
www.FishHeadquarters.com
754-214-7863 cell
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