We had a full day trip today
and decided to go offshore fishing for Dolphin, (mahi). There have been a few dolphin around, but it’s still a little early for the really good dolphin fishing.
There has been a lot of Sargasso weed
offshore and normally that’s good. The Sargasso weed grows on the surface of the ocean and provides shelter and habitat for small fish and other critters. Larger predators such as Dolphin know this and will hunt around the Sargasso weed looking for a meal. Trolling along the Sargasso weed is standard operating procedure when dolphin fishing.
Unfortunately, we don’t have much current right now,
so the ocean is kind of stagnant. The same weed has been drifting around for a while now. The wind keeps pushing it around. Also, the lack of current causes the weed to scatter all over. When there is current, it tends to line up and makes it easy to fish when you are offshore fishing. Today it was a scattered mess, but there were fish in it.
We did not “crush” the fish as the saying goes, but we did bring in about a dozen “keepers” including one about 16lbs. We had a few other “gaffers” and we threw back about 8 or 10 that were too small.
All in all, we ended up with a nice mess of fish.
My mate had to work his but off keeping the lines clear of weed, but he’s good at and never complains. He knows that if you keep clearing the weed off the bait, eventually it will pay off with a fish. I’m sure days like today it seems like I’m intentionally driving through the weed, But when it’s scattered out like it was, sometimes, there is no clear path to troll. Today was one of those days