Fishing Headquarters

Fishing Headquarters traces back to a twelve-year-old deckhand who talked his way onto the docks at Bahia Mar in the late 1960s by claiming to be four years older than he actually was. That deckhand, Paul Roydhouse, spent years working other captains’ boats and fishing marlin tournaments in the Bahamas before taking out a thirty-thousand-dollar loan in 1994 to buy his first charter boat, the Big Game. According to the company’s own account, other charter captains at Bahia Mar pitched in to help get that first boat ready for paying customers, a detail that says something about how tight-knit the marina’s fishing community has stayed over the years. Roydhouse and his sons still run the operation today from the same Bahia Mar Yachting Center at 301 Seabreeze Boulevard, and the company has grown into one of the larger fishing charter operations working out of South Florida, with eight sportfishing boats and two large drift-fishing boats in the fleet.

The two main ways to fish with this outfit reflect very different experiences. Drift fishing, run aboard the eighty-five-foot Catch My Drift or the Mary B III, is a shared, walk-on trip priced at seventy dollars per person, aimed at anglers targeting snapper and grouper over structure without needing their own gear, boat knowledge, or fishing partner. It’s a good option for a solo traveler, a family with mixed experience levels, or anyone who wants to fish for a few hours without committing to a private charter. Sport fishing charters are the other route, run on forty-six-foot boats rigged with fighting chairs, live wells, and tuna towers for offshore fishing, priced around a hundred ninety-nine dollars per person and built for anglers chasing sailfish, mahi, tuna, and other big game species. Swordfishing and tarpon-specific charters are also available, and private charters can be arranged for groups of seven or more who want the whole boat to themselves.

Given how much of Fort Lauderdale’s fishing crowd already knows this operation, advance booking matters, particularly for the drift boats, which the company’s own site notes sell out regularly. Anglers should show up about thirty minutes before the scheduled departure, bring sun protection, non-slip shoes, and something to settle a stomach if seas are questionable, since offshore trips out of Fort Lauderdale can run choppy depending on the day. It’s worth confirming fishing license coverage at booking. For a first offshore trip or a repeat visit to South Florida’s fishing grounds, the range between the affordable drift boat and the full sport fishing charter gives visitors a real choice in how much they want to spend and how serious the fishing gets.