The first fish, a Mahi Mahi, was raised on the teaser and ate one of our Ballyhoos

A local resident of Fort Lauderdale, FL, Jesse Prry, and his relatives from Georgia and Illinois incorporated a family reunion and a deep sea fishing charter aboard the Happy Day Today for an eight hour fishing trip with the Topshotfishing team aboard our 46’ Hatteras.
Favorable weather – winds out of the east at 5-7 mph, blue skies, the sun glimmering over the horizon and water temperatures of 80 degrees - was the setting for an enjoyable and fruitful fishing charter.

We arrived at the sea buoy in Fort Lauderdale FL which sits in 120 ft. of water.  The color of the water was greenish brown with no current, which is not a good situation for fishing, so offshore we went.  Twenty minutes later in 680 ft. of water the ocean turned to a brilliant clear indigo blue with sargassum seaweed, debris (coconuts, tree branches and pieces of wood) and most importantly birds working the weed line.  I operated the boat and headed South parallel to the weed line off of Fort Lauderdale FL.  We had four Ballyhoos for surface baits and one yellow jap feather, and for a deep line we had a 3 ½ blue reflector drone spoon on the plainer rod and two teasers out.

The first fish, a Mahi Mahi, was raised on the teaser and ate one of our Ballyhoos.  Rose, Jesse’s mom, reeled the Mahi Mahi to the boat like a professional angler – I was quite impressed with her abilities.  From there, the anglers took turn catching one Mahi Mahi after another, with our largest bull Mahi Mahi weighing 35 lbs, followed by a 26 lb, a 24 lb, a 23 lb, a 21 lb and a 11 more Mahi Mahi’s in the 10 lb. class with two Black Fin Tunas.  Rose reeled in 70% of the fish, and I would like to thank her for her spirit and humor, which she provided on this fishing charter.

With a good catch of fish on the charter boat Happy Day Today and the Topshotfishing team, it was time to start heading back from our offshore trip.

For a successful and adventurous deep sea fishing charter in South Florida for Sailfish, Shark, Bonito, Mackerel, Swordfish, Snapper, Wahoo and Grouper contact Captain Zsak. - 954-439-8106 or email us at www.topshotfishing.com. 

Just one of those days

Today we set out deep-sea fishing aboard the Hooked Up with Jussi, Anton, Jukka, Sara and Jan all from Helsinki, Finland.

We started out trolling the reef with 2 planner boards running about 45 feet down and 3 baits skipping across the surface. We started out trolling our way to the south about 3 miles with not so much as a bite. Ok so than we worked our way off shore and only managed to catch one little black fin tuna.

It was just one of those days where we just could not seem to get anything to bite.

To make matters even worse this was one of the nicest families I’ve meet in a long time. They just kept says that they were just happy being out in the boat and the more they said that the worse I felt.

Ok that was enough of that and I made a corporate decision. I called them all up on the fly bridge with me and told them about these little fish we could catch and then once we got back to the dock I could get this restaurant to cook them up for them.

Once again they were just fine with whatever we wanted to do. So in came the trolling gear and out came the chicken rigs.(Chicken rig has 5 hooks in a row with a lead at the bottom)

I went to one of my bottom spots that I had not fished on for a long time and the second the lead hit the bottom I knew I had made the right choice.

Not only were the snappers biting but they were all pretty big one too.

Fishing with Joe, Catherine and Loren off the coast of South Florida aboard Hooked Up

Today we had Catherine and Joe from Nashville Tenn. and Loren from Fort Lauderdale out for a few hours of deep sea fishing off the coast of Fort Lauderdale aboard the Hooked Up.

We headed out the inlet at Port Everglades when we noticed the birds diving all over the place inside the port. We set out a couple of little clark spoons just to see what all the commotion was about. Within seconds both rods bent over and we were hooked up. As it turned out the Spanish mackerels were everywhere and biting like mad dogs. We spent a good 30 min just doing circles around the port catching these mackerels one after another. What a blast catching them on light tackle.

Once we had had enough of catching Spanish mackerels we went into the ocean and went right to trolling the reef with bonito strips and ballyhoos.

Trolling the reef we ended up with 3 nice kingfish and 2 big skipjacks.

Loren, Catherine and Joe thanks again for fishing with us aboard the Hooked up.

Captain Taco (954) 764-4344 or toll free @ (877) SEA-4344