Big Mahi

We’ve finally settled into a nice summertime pattern with the weather. Very hot days with light wind and calm seas with some thunderstorms to avoid. Unfortunately, the tuna have been a little up and down. Here one day and gone the next. The good news is that the nice dolphin(mahi mahi) have arrived in full force and they are a lot of fun to fish for. We got a bit of a late start on Saturday , June 21st due to a very crowded dock. We came across a beautiful green to blue rip line only 10 miles out so we stopped to look for bait. No good bait but the guys had fun putting 10 chicken dolphin in the boat before heading south. At about 25 miles we came across a very large patch of grass that looked promising so we stopped to give it a look. We immediately casted a popper and had 5 nice dolphin following it when the biggest one finally decided to grab it. After some big jumps and some tangled grass, I stuck the gaff in a georgeous 45lber. biggest one I’ve seen this year. I put out the skirted ballyhoo in hopes of catching the other 4 but we doubled up twice on medium sized ones before we gave up and left. Upon arrival, our rig looked good on the sounder but crowded with boats. We got another nice dolphin immediately on a live bait and had a nice tuna bite but missed him. Chunking resulted in one nice 75 lb tuna and one undersized yellowfin. We stuck it out but they just didn’t want to bite so we headed north. I decided to stop on the rip line again and troll it this time. Within 15 minutes the drag starts ripping off of one of the reels. I looked back and saw a 200 lb marlin jumping around like crazy. The fish finally stopped jumping and the fight was on. About 5 minutes in, he starts jumping again and spits the hook back at us. A little disappointing but always a cool sight to see.