September/ October 2007

We are now into our fall patterns for our major game fish species encountered on Ft. Lauderdale fishing charters. The huge schools of Bonito have for the most part left our area. This year’s Bonito run was literally off the scale. We caught hundreds of these stocky "bombers”. We will continue to encounter Bonito schools throughout the winter season, but in much lesser numbers..
Large schools of mullet are moving through our area. We encounter these baitfish anywhere from the surfline on out to several hundred feet of water. These schools can be the source of good fishing, as I caught Tarpon(yes we do that too) inshore and the Marlin my Darlin also caught Dolphin off of an offshore school in the last three days. Sailfish are scattered but are always a possibility, and the odds for opportunities at them will only get better. Capt. Steve and Chris had a good sized Blue Marlin take an eight pound Dolphin out of the spread today. Sometime the big one gets away.
We continue to do well with Kingfish. Soon we will see the southernmost schools of Spanish Mackerel in our area feeding on southerly migrating schools of finger to palm sized Spanish Sardines ,Cigar Minnows ,Herring ,and Pilchards among others. They will be closely followed by some really big Kings (aka smokers).These big Kings are a favorite target of ours. The largest schools of Spanish will hold some super-sized Bull sharks and also very large Barracuda.
In summary our Sept/ Oct months offer the same species as the late summer months. The number of fish per day on occasion will be less, but larger fish are available to us now. Wahoo will continue to be taken by our charters. There will be days when conditions are right and we will make sailfish our target species, but on most days our focus will be on kings ,dolphin , assorted bottom /wreckfish ,the ever persistent bonito........and with a little luck a nice wahoo in the fishbox

Capt Rick @ Marlin My Darlin Sportfishing