Trouble Maker!

Ask a hundred dolphin experts to sketch their favorite trolling spread, and you’ll likely get a hundred different drawings with a multitude of lines and lures going every which way. Nevertheless, regardless of how many lines you troll or exactly where you position favorite lures in your spread, troll an additional line down the center and deploy a naked ballyhoo way back in the “super shotgun” position. I don’t mean at the end of the white water. I’m talking 500 feet or more! Obviously, it only makes sense that this bait be dragged off an outfit equipped with a high-capacity reel. Swimming at nearly two football fields behind the boat, the straggler will be presented in clean, quiet water well behind the other offerings so it doesn’t appear to be part of the spread, but rather a loner looking for trouble.

Golden Grass

Not all weed patches are created equal. Some clumps of Sargasso have been floating aimlessly for who knows how long and are almost dead and barren of life. As you approach a well-formed patch, look in the water around and under the vegetation for juvenile crustaceans and baitfish. If the grass is “alive,” it is likely that game fish will be nearby and worth further investigation. When this is the case, the best bait is what is available directly on the fishing grounds. Juvenile triggers, puffers, runners and jacks seek shelter among the floating grass and are exactly what local dolphin are feeding on, so why not give them precisely what they want. To draw the prime baitfish out from under the flotsam where they can be easily captured with a sabiki rig or tiny, baited hook, hang a block of frozen chum off the side of the boat as you drift by the patch and watch as the baitfish magically come to you.

Wake & Bake

Unlike many other fish, dolphin feed mainly during the day and are rarely caught at night. This means anglers who have baits in the water at the crack of dawn have the best shot of finding hungry fish looking for breakfast. Most dolphin are caught before noon for this reason. I'm not saying you can’t catch a few ‘phins late in the afternoon when the sun is high and ocean surface temperatures have reached the baking point, but remember that the later in the day it gets, the more the odds are against you.