It is getting late in the summer for Dolphin. Traditionally, as the summer sun warms the waters of Key West, the fish move further offshore. A couple of days ago, we went 30 miles looking for fish and really didn’t find many. Today we went 10 miles and found more fish than we did 30miles out. There has been plenty of sargassum weed to fish all summer, but not all of it holds fish. We found some sargassum weed about 10 miles due south of Key West today. It was not organized or easy to fish, but we started catching as soon as we go to it. We needed better fishing today and it was looking like it was going to be better
Not all the fish we were catching were “keepers”. There have been a lot of “throwback” fish lately. But we were getting more “keepers than the last few trips. We had more birds action today too. When we are offshore fishing, we watch for birds pecking at the water. When the birds are “working” this way, it usually means there are fish feeding there. It’s a good sign most of the time and it was today.
We didn’t have any well-formed Sargassum weed lines today. All the weed was laying with the wind or scattered out. It was a nightmare for my mate. The hooks were constantly getting weed on them and dolphin don’t like salad, so he was constantly clearing the baits. it’s a lot of work in 90′ heat but you have to do it or you won’t get any bites.
it was definitely better fishing today. By the end of the day, we had 10 keeper dolphin and a couple of big bonitos. We released a couple of barracudas and a very small Black Fin Tuna. We released a bunch of small dolphins again today, but at least we had a decent amount of “keepers”. My customers were happy and that is the most important thing. They are already talking about coming back in the fall looking for Sailfish. I’m looking forward to it.