Fort Lauderdale Drift Fishing Trip

Drift fishing is a great way to get out fishing in Ft. Lauderdale. We run 3 four hour fishing trips every day. Our boat is the Catch My Drift, a beautiful 85′ Gulfcraft party fishing boat, coast guard certified and licensed. You won’t find a bigger, faster, or more comfortable boat in our area. We include everything you will need on your trip: rods, bait, tackle, licenses, everything. NO EXPERIENCE NECCESSARY. Our crew is experienced, professional and friendly and they are there to assist you with everything.

Drift Fishing Trips on the Reef

8:30am-12:30pm and 1:30pm-5:30pm every day

Most of our fishing on our 2 daytime trips is done on the reef in about 100’ of water, about a mile offshore of Ft Lauderdale beach. We target Kingfish, Mackerel, Tuna, Bonito, Mahi Mahi, Wahoo, Snapper, Grouper, and even the occasional Sailfish. Different species bite at different times of the year but there are lots of species that are possible to catch. On our drift fishing trips, we head to our fishing spots about a mile offshore and then we shut down the engines. We let the wind and current slowly push the boat over the reefs and wrecks that we fish on. Everyone fishes off the side of the boat, fishing the surface, mid-depth or on the bottom. With 85 feet of fishing rail, the Catch My Drift is the perfect boat for drift fishing in Fort Lauderdale.

Night Anchor Fishing

3PM-11:30PM every night

 

At night we anchor the boat and chum the water. Yellowtail snapper are abundant on the Ft Lauderdale reefs, all you have to do is chum them up. We chum the water to attract all the fish in the vicinity to come to us. We fish the bottom for yellowtail snapper, mangrove and mutton snapper, groupers, cobia, sharks, and all the other multitudes of bottom fish species that live on our reefs. The fish we catch are smaller at night, but we catch a lot more of them. And snappers are really good eating! The night trip is definitely our best trip for action.

Saturday Night 6 Hour Trip

7:30PM-1:30AM Saturday Night ONLY

 

We fish a 4 hour trip every night, but on Saturday Nights, we fish for 6 hours. You can sleep in on Sunday! At night we anchor and chum the water for snappers, groupers and all the multitudes of reef fish species that we catch on the bottom. Yellowtail, mangrove and mutton snappers bite especially good on the reefs of Fort Lauderdale at night. On the 6 hour trip, we have time to reach some of the spots we can’t normally fish on our 4 hour trips. Also, the late night snappper bite can sometime get really really good. With 6 hours to fish, we come in with a lot more fish!

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It’s a New Year With Lots of New Fish Biting on the Fort Lauderdale Edge

We had a great end to 2016 with some awesome catches on some large and exotic fish. We caught some huge wahoos, which are biting better this year than I have seen in long while, big red snappers, which are exceedingly rare in Fort Lauderdale and we’ve caught some big tunas, kingfish and sailfish. It was a great end to a great year. And now in 2017, a whole new batch of fish are moving through. Notably, we just had our very first cold front in Fort Lauderdale. It lasted 2 days and temperatures hit the high 50’s! Brrrrrrrrrr! That’s cold for us south Florida folk who wear sandles all year long. The cold weather did something to the fishing though. It got the sailfish snapping! We caught more sailfish in those 2 days than we had in the past 2 weeks. Sailfish love the cold weather, it gets them all frisky. This is the season for sailfish and without the cold weather, we were having a mediocre season on them. When the cold weather hit, it was like a light switch that went off and they finally started biting in respectable numbers. Glad to see them because so many anglers come from all around the world to catch these awesome gamefish.

Start of the New Year With Some Fishing!

Wahoo are another gamefish that is biting extremely well. One of the fastest fish in the ocean and my personal favorite fish to eat, wahoo are an exciting gamefish that bites voraciously in the winter months. This year, with the super moons we’re having, wahoo are biting like crazy. We had some awesome days of wahoo fishing over the past few weeks and they are still biting strong. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen such good wahoo fishing in south Florida. You usually have to go to Bimini in the Bahamas or even San Salvador to catch wahoos like we have this month. Some of the wahoos reached 60+ pounds. Wahoo are crafty fish as they shy away from wire leaders and their razor sharp teeth can cut through monofilament like a knife through butter. We have to be equally crafty when catching them by not applying too much drag on the initial hookup, keeping control of their head during the fight and not letting them shake the hooks when close to the boat. With good coordination from the captain and mate, we can successfully land most of the wahoo we hook.

Awesome Catch of Some Giant Red Snappers and Grouper on Our Sportfishing Charter

Tunas, kingfish, bonitos and barracuda are also biting all over the reefs. This is a great time of year for trolling the reefs as there is a bevy of different species to provide good action for our charters. Trolling the reefs is the best fishing method to catch lots of fish and lots of variety. You can literally catch anything while trolling the Ft Lauderdale reefs, from sailfish and the rare marlin to king, Spanish and cero mackerels. You never know what you might pull in when dragging lures and rigged baits over our expansive reef system. Sometimes bottom fish come up from the bottom to grab our deeper pulling, planer baits. When our charters tell us to keep them on the fish or to just catch as many fish as we can, trolling is the best method to employ. January is the month for big kingfish, one of the largest of the mackerels. Kingfish average 4-8 pounds but can sometimes reach weights of 40+ pounds. We call these monster kingfish, ‘smoker’ kings because when they hit, they ‘smoke’ the reels by pulling drag off the rods so quickly. And also because they taste great when you cook them using a smoker (greatest fish dip of all time).

Goodbye 2016!

Happy New Years! We hope 2017 is your best year yet!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to you and your family from all of us at Fishing Headquarters!