Still catching dolphin. Most of the dolphin we are catching are smaller fish. They are called “chicken dolphin”. Don’t ask me why. They were called that before I started fishing and the will probably be called that long after I’m gone. but when you are catching small dolphin, it is known as “chicken’ pickin’ ” and that’s what we were doing today
We caught a decent number of fish, but a lot of them were undersized. The minimum size on a dolphin is 20 inches from the head to the fork. To be honest, I don’t want to catch a ton of fish that size. There really isn’t a lot of meat on them and dolphin grow very fast. They can grow to 15-20lbs in their first year. So to kill a bunch of just barely legal fish doesn’t make sense. I don’t mind keeping enough for my customers to have dinner. but I don’t want my limit on them.
We ended up with 9-10 fish and threw back at least that many. We also caught some small jacks. These are some of the fish that live in and under the Sargasso weeds. They use it for protection from larger predatory fish and they also feed on the smaller critters that also live in the Sargasso weed.
Everyone on the boat had caught a dolphin except one and he had one to the boat but lost it. SO, when he caught this “beautiful” jack, I just had to put his picture up with it. He seemed to be a good sport about it. I guess I’ll find out next time they come out. When you make your living catching fish, you have to have a sense of humor. I’ll never get rich doing this, so I might as well have fun while I can.