The month of June is a prime time to fish for dolphin in South Florida. One of the species most sought after by local offshore anglers, dolphin are plentiful this time of year.
Among the reasons for the popularity of the colorful, acrobatic fish is they often travel in large schools, they jump a lot when they’re hooked, they fight hard, they eat live baits, dead baits and lures, and they taste delicious blackened, grilled, sautéed, fried and even microwaved.
The keys to finding the fish are to look for diving birds, weed lines and floating debris. Birds will hover over a school of dolphin to pick off the baitfish that the voracious dolphin send into the air when they feed on the small fish. Baitfish gather under weed lines and debris such as tree trunks and wooden pallets, which attracts schools of dolphin.
Fishermen get excited when they see a frigate bird flying high overhead because they often follow dolphin in the hopes that the fish will send a flying fish airborne that they can grab. Studying a frigate’s movements is critical to determining if the bird is on a fish.
Frigates that are diving are on fish. Ones that are high in the sky are looking for fish. Frigates that are intently flying south are usually on bigger dolphin because those fish have the strength to swim south into the north-flowing current of the Gulf Stream.
Anglers should get ahead of a frigate bird and start trolling baits or lures to catch the fish the bird is following. A tactic suggested by Capt. Bouncer Smith of Miami Beach is to use live bait to pinpoint the location of the dolphin. He said boaters can get south and west of a frigate that’s flying south and toss some live pilchards into the water. Then they can get directly south of the bird and put out more pilchards and then go east of the bird and do it again.
When you see fish bust the baits, you know where to fish. Smith said to either cast a live bait to the busts or slow-troll over to them.
Smith added that if he gets in front of a frigate bird that doesn’t dive within 10 minutes, the bird is probably not on fish, and Smith looks for another bird.
If he sees little brown birds on the water, that probably means they’re feeding on scraps left behind by dolphin. If he sees a bunch of little birds working a weed patch, that usually means there are blue runners or dolphin under the weeds.
Thick weed lines are often the most productive places to find dolphin because they will tend to hold the most bait. But not always, said Capt. Jim Sharpe of Summerland Key.
“A lot of people think we catch most all of our dolphin on weed lines, which is really not the case,” he said. “We catch 80 percent of our fish on birds or out of the blue. Birds meaning little 15-inch sooty terns and of course frigate birds, they’re excellent.
“A lot of times you’ll find a nice weed line, but there’s no bait under that weed. In that case you’re not going to have a bunch of fish around the weed line. I’ve seen times in the summer when there’d be a beautiful weed line but no bait under it. And you look off to the side a half a mile away and you see the sooty terns working and that’s where the dolphin are. They’re out there eating the flying fish because there’s nothing under the weed line.”
Sometimes scattered weeds, which many anglers run past, can hold dolphin.
I had a trip with a friend out of Hillsboro Inlet where we passed some so-so weeds nine miles off the inlet as we searched for birds and thick weed lines. After going 20 miles offshore without seeing either, we decided to go back to the patchy weeds and slow-troll some live goggle-eyes on spinning outfits.
It didn’t take long for a dolphin to eat one of the baits. A few minutes later we saw a bigger fish cruise by, its green and yellow body easy to spot in the clear blue water. We cast out a goggle-eye and the dolphin ate it almost immediately. After a brief battle, that fish joined the first dolphin in the boat’s cooler.
If you come across a school of dolphin, most captains agree that live bait should be your last choice. Instead, anglers should start off by casting chunks of bait, such as ballyhoo or bonito, to the schoolies.
When the fish tire of the chunks or ignore them, Smith will use a knife to trim and streamline pieces of bait so they resemble small baitfish such as glass minnows. Another option is to cast bucktail jigs to the fish, which pulsate as they are retrieved and can look more enticing to dolphin than dead bait.