It has always amazed me
how fishing can change from one day to the next. Yesterday we struggled early. Too weedy to fish and no fish when it was clean enough to troll for the better part of the morning. We eventually found fish in about 650 ft of water so today, I figured that would be a good place to start.
I’m glad I did.
We got to that depth and there was some nicely formed patches of Sargasso weed. Not a perfect line, but the north side was clean and easy to fish. Most importantly, there were fish, lots of fish. Nice sized dolphin started to bite as soon as we put our lines out.
We only had two anglers.
It was their first time fishing with me and I think I spoiled them. My mate wasn’t able to get a full pattern out for almost an hour. We always had a fish on. Not all were “keepers”, but most were and there were plenty we put the gaff in. This is the kind of fishing I look forward to and the kind of fishing that keeps this job fun.
My customers were decent anglers,
so we put spinning rods out whenever we got a small school of fish behind us. it takes longer to bring in the fish, but it’s more fun too.
The day was going great.
Two great guys for a charter, Plenty of fish, plenty of action, Beautiful weather. I got the “pressure” to find fish off my back early. I was loving it. Not much could make this day better.
Then we hooked it. A monster Dolphin.
I could tell it was a big dolphin when it hit, both by the size of the swirl on the bait and the amount of line it took out. When it first jumped, I called it a 30lb+ dolphin on the radio. Then it jumped again and we realized it was bigger than that. 40lbs at least, maybe 50lbs. The fish pulled out about 150 yds of line, but my angler was in good shape and even though it took a while, he handled the fish relatively easily. That is if you count straining for 40 minutes in 90+ heat “easily”. Hey, I barely broke a sweat on the bridge
We caught a 42lb Dolphin a few weeks ago.
it was the first dolphin over 40lbs I have caught in a couple of years. It was a great fish and this fish looked bigger.
When we put it in the boat,
we knew it was real close to 50lbs. When we put it on the scale it was 47lbs. We missed the 50lb mark, but I can’t say we were disappointed. a 47lb bull dolphin is a monster. It drew quite a crowd at the dock. You don’t see a dolphin that bit very often so it attracts a lot of attention when you do.
We ended up with about 20 “keeper” dolphin
up to about 15lbs and the one Monster Bull of 47lbs. It was an outstanding day. I have the same group again on Saturday. I warned them that this was going to be a tough day to top. But they came to get some fish to take home. After today, they could not have a bad trip.