Fishing Fort Lauderdale on Happy Day Today with Capt. Zsak
The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show is in full swing with boats ranging from 14’ up to 250’ yachts bringing people from all over the world to view the new boat and marine products.
Joe Florea from Aruba Construction in Pompano Beach, FL, an old friend and customer who has fished with me in the Bahamas, and Rick Muller, a professional angler from Miami, chartered the Happy Day Today to do some deep sea sport fishing Fort Lauderdale FL. We had blue skies, winds out of the east at 5-7 mph, 1-2 ft. seas – just a typical, beautiful day here in Fort Lauderdale FL to do some fishing. Our target was Mahi Mahi and Groupers. Twenty minutes after leaving the dock at Bahia Mar, we were fishing in 120 ft. of water, 1.8 miles from shore. We started off by trolling with one plainer down with a blue and white sea witch and a double hook Mullet strip. For surface baits we had two Ballyhoos, two Bonito strips and one ¼ yellow and green jap feather, and a Ballyhoo daisy chain for a teaser.
I headed to the east in search of any type of debris floating, such as boards, tree branches, and sargassum weed, and birds working. The tell tale signs of sargassum weeds is to look for a slick – the sargassum weeds will secret oils which will give you a sheen on the water. A mile off shore we ran across large patches of sargassum weeds – our first pass produced a 12 lb. Mahi Mahi. From there we kept working one weed patch after the other and wound up with 6 Mahi Mahi’s. We decided to do some Grouper fishing on one of 34 artificial wrecks in Ft. Lauderdale that sits in 380 ft. of water. On the way to this wreck, some birds were working the area. I approached the birds and worked the area and caught 4 Black Fin Tunas. Once we got to the wreck, I put down one live Blue Runner for bait. After 10 minutes of waiting, nobody was home. From there I tried another artificial wreck, south of Fort Lauderdale, in 345 ft. of water. Luck was on our side at this wreck; we would up catching two Snowy Groupers. From there we went back to trolling and would up with 3 Kingfish and 3 Bonitos.
It was time to head back to the dock at Bahia Mar 801 Seabreeze Blvd. Fort Lauderdale 33316.
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