Catching Bonitos and a few Kingfish

Joy Lee from Fairhaven, New Jersey and friends chartered the Happy Day Today along with the Topshotfishing team to do some offshore sport fishing in Fort Lauderdale FL.

Twenty minutes after leaving the dock we had lines in the water at the drop off, sitting in 120 ft. of water. Our surface baits consisted of two Ballyhoos, two Bonito strips and for deep lines we ran two plainers one with a 3 ½ blue reflector spoon and the other with a purple and black sea witch in front of a double hook Mullet strip.

I worked the reef in and out from 80 ft of water out to 170 ft. Our first bite was a 9 lb Bonito from the surface bait. The action was consistent, catching Bonitos and a few Kingfish. With seven fish in the fish box, I headed to one of our 34 artificial reefs located in Fort Lauderdale. When there is little or no current, it is a good practice to work areas around wrecks. One of our plainer rods got a good strike, as line peeled off the reel at a quick rate. Joy was the angler and brought to the boat a 46” Barracuda. Pictures were taken and the cuda was released. From there we added a couple of Black Fin Tunas to the rest of the catch and headed in.