Transitioning from Winter to Spring Fishing

Capt. Ryan McBride
March 17, 2010
Fort Lauderdale - Saltwater Fishing Report

The past couple weeks have been a blur. On top of the fishing changing daily I have a new baby at home to make things fly by. On the reef the sailfishing has slowed considerably. We are still seeing some fish but for the most part the winter bite has past. There have been a couple of decent bites to the south of Fort Lauderdale down to Government cut but it has been hit or miss at best.
Kingfish have continued to bite when you can find the school. One day we have caught the kingfish off Ft. Lauderdale the next we have had to move up to Boynton and the next Boca Raton. We have caught kings in as shallow as 10ft of water all the way out to 180ft of water.
Mixed in on the reef are the usual bonitas. Though you wouldn't want to eat them they are a blast to catch on light tackle.
Back on the beach there have been a good amount of spanish mackeral and bluefish roaming the shallows. Again they are great fun on light tackle and the good news is once you get your fill of them you can take one and put it back out as bait. Chasing the mackeral and bluefish have been big schools of spinner sharks. These fish are as accrobatic as sailfish but have teeth. They pull really hard and because we are targeting them in shallow water we have been able to target them on lighter tackle then when they are out in 100ft+. Our charters have been averaging 2-8 sharks over the past 2 weeks.
There are a few cobias to the north of Fort Lauderdale but it requires a considerable run to get to them and the right conditions to find the schools. We made the run a week ago and caught a bunch but every week they move farther and farther away.
Offshore I have heard scattered reports of dolphin. The weather needs to settle down to hear of any sort of consistent bite. Usually by end of march to the beginning of april they begin to bite well and by the end of april we have had a good run of bigger fish. We caugh a few ft. lauderdale dolphin last week in the 10-20lb range so it should happen before we know it.
The swordfishing has been good over the past couple week. Daytime swordfishing has been really good with fish in the 100-250lb. range fairly common. We have caught up to four fish on a trip over the past few weeks.

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