Supermoon Fishing in Ft Lauderdale
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
November 13, 2016
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report
The supermoon happens this week on November 14. Its the biggest moon since 1948 and it won't appear this large again until 2034. The moon affects the fishing in several ways. First off, the light the moon reflects has a tremendous impact on the fishing. The more light, the easier it is for predator fish to hunt and find prey. Some smaller fish lay low and stay dormant during the full moon, some fish feed with greater verocity and some species even use the full moon to spawn and lay their eggs. The full moon fishing is unpredictable. I can say that I have had some of my best catches of my life on the full moon and other times I've had some of the slowest fishing I've ever seen in my life. It's hard to predict and full moons have highly variable results. In general, I do find that the afternoon and night fishing tends to be the best times to fish during the full moons, usually much better than the morning trips. Probably because the fish were up late feeding all through the night.
Another factor the moon has on the fishing is not so much a factor of being a full moon, but rather it's closeness to earth. This week the moon gets closer to earth that it has in a very long time. Gravity is a function of both mass and distance. The closer the moon comes to earth, the more the moon's gravity will pull the tides. We expect tides to be at extreme levels this week. We're already seeing water coming over the seawalls during high tide and by Nov 14, it will be even higher. It makes the high tide higher and the low tide lower. The inshore fishing is usually much more affected by the tides, but this week with the abnormally large tides, even the deep sea fishing will see an effect.
With the extra big tides and more importantly, the tide swings, we expect some off-the-scale wahoo fishing. Wahoo bite best right during the tide change and when we get these extreme high/low tides, they sometimes SNAP! I would not be surprised at all if the wahoo fishing on Monday and Tuesday this week is the best wahoo fishing of the century. The tides are already starting to swing heavier than normal and we've caught several big wahoo on our trips this week.
This past week has been excellent fishing for other species too such as sailfish, blackfin tuna, mahi-mahi and kingfish. Trolling has been working out the best for action. Trolling the reefs this week has produced good catches of most of our larger reef species. That's pretty standard for November, but the bite may (or may not) get even better as we get into the days/nights during the supermoon. The run up to now over the past days has been quite good, if that's any indicator. I can't tell ahead of time how good the fishing will be over the next few days, but if I was personally trying to choose a time when fishing could potentially be at it's best, I would certainly try fishing on one of these supermoon days or nights.
Good luck to everyone fishing this week. I'm looking forward to seeing some good fishing out there. I'll sea ya on the water.
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