October 2, 2011

Last Saturday, April asked me to take her fishing. The weather was going to be nice on Sunday, so I broke out an electric fishing reel to try some daytime swordfishing. Saturday night I invited my buddy Andrew  to go along so we could have an extra hand on board. He said sure, and he’d bring his girlfriend Sam, so everything was good. We woke up at 5:30 am on Sundaywith a little more wind than expected, but we decided to go anyway. We launched the boat and were about 10 miles offshore when the girls said it was too rough to continue, so we turned around. On the way back to the dock the girls decided they wanted to try some sailfishing. With a dozen frisky pilchards in the live well, the decision to fish was made. The wind was blowing about 20-30 knots out of the north so it was a little bumpy offshore, but the seas were smoother nearshore. Four live baits were put out and we made our first drift near the whistle buoy in 150 feet of water (about 1 mile offshore). It wasn’t long before the kingfish started chopping us off. We saw a few man-o-war birds working in shallow so we picked up and ran in to see what was happening. The birds were tracking a huge school of ballyhoo with at least a dozen nice mahi mahi crashing the school. A quick cast out with live baits and all four of us were tight on nice fish. In less than 15 minutes we had all landed fish over 12 lbs. All this action was in 35 feet of water right in front of Port Everglades inlet. We eventually lost the ballyhoo school so we ran back to 100 feet of water, put the baits back out, and in 25 minutes Andrew hooked a sailfish and passed the rod to Sam. It was her first sailfish ever! After she got it behind the boat, we popped the hooks, released the fish, then ran back in to the shallows and anchored to chum up some more bait. In one throw of the cast net I was able to load the baitwell with ballyhoo. We spotted the birds just outside, in forty feet of water, baited up and caught a couple more nice mahi mahi. We also jumped off another nice sail. All in all, our daytime “swordfishing” trip sure was productive.