May brings Mahi Mahi for Happy Anglers in Fort Lauderdale
As promised May's fishing has been nothing short of spectacular. The fish on everyone's agenda is the mahi mahi, the dorado, the dolphin fish or whatever you choose to call it, all I know is whatever name you use I think it just means delicious! This green and gold gamester travel in large schools when they are young 3-8 pounds, once they pass that mark and they are about 8-15 pounds they begin to travel in smaller packs and once 15-50 pounds they normally travel in pairs.
The pairs normally consists of one big bull (male) fish and a large cow, sometimes another cow may be present. The mahi mahi is a great gamefish for several reasons, besides its table quality the mahi mahi is an eager biter, once you find the fish they are almost always willing to bite, they are beautiful with an array of green and yellows with some blues mixed in, they are great jumpers putting on some great aerial displays for your camera. Techniques for catching mahi mahi are pretty simple. The easiest is just to pull a couple of small top water lures made by soft head or some small feathers and look for birds, floating debris and weed lines.
Once hooked keep one in the water to keep the school around while you catch its schoolmates on light spinning tackle with small chunks of ballyhoo or bonita. You can step it up by "Running and Gunning", instead of fishing a lot of open clean water you can run or chug while looking for something like the before mentioned weed lines, floating debris and birds. Once found then deploy your baits and begin trolling. Yet another method is to find a weed line or rip and cut the engine, put out a chum bag and begin live chumming with small pilchards put a few on hooks and let them come to you. Keep your vhf radio on the local fishing channel and listen for the depth of fish being caught and concentrate your efforts there. Always have a larger live bait like a goggle, mullet or blue runner ready for when that big bull comes in the spread or swims up to the boat to see what's going on. When fishing floating debris like boards or logs make sure you troll a deep bait on a planer or down rigger for wahoos that are almost always present.
Capt. Mike
www.fishlocalknowledge.com
954.522.4773