While fishing out of Marathon Florida this past week everybody there said the mahi fishing had just started for them in good numbers. Granite not a whole lot of size they said but definilty there prime from what they have seen. They acted like this was the latest season they have seen in years and some of the best fishing in 10 years this late. So my question and thoughts were who thinks they haven’t left yet? Or have they already returned south? It has me wondering b/c a week before we left we had 2 great days out of Charleston ourself back to back pretty much. But I haven’t seen any new post of good numbers while we were down there. Just curios of others opinions? Thx…
Just my opinion.
The keys have a thick resident population of dolphin that simply move close or away from shore depending on water temp and food.
We have a resident population as well but I do not believe it is to the number south Florida has. As far as our “dolphin run” I believe the dolphin came through in large numbers early but we had and may still have large tightly packed schools that pass through. If some hits a school they did very well and others not so much. Maybe the dolphin schooled up like that with the increased billfish pressure? Maybe like small birds do when confronted by a hawk?
Again just my opinion through observation… No expert.
Glad to hear you guys had a great time in marathon.
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They just made it sound like a odd year and they see them from an airplane in huge numbers on the reefs so they say.
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I will quit being a jackass for two seconds and help you out. Pull up Don Hammond’s website and study the migration patterns of dolphin up through the Caribbean, through the Florida straights and off the FL, GA, SC, NC coast. Our larger fish we catch in the spring and early summer are following a migration route off the back side of the Abacos. Keys dolphin move up the inside western edge of the stream and cut across offshore of North Florida/Georgia to the backside and move into the OBX. None of this is absolute, fish cross back and forth, get caught in eddies,etc but these are the large pushes.
A lot of the fish caught in the keys this time of year and even up off our coast in the later summer months are smaller fish. Dolphin are sexually mature at 3-5 months and are around legal size to keep (20" FL) within 2-3 months. The smaller fish being caught in big numbers are only a couple of months old and are probably the offspring of fish that laid eggs in the stream between Feb and April.
I do know the loop current in the Gulf has been drastically out of place and this may have stymied the push of fish through the keys and helped to give us a little better season than we have seen in the last couple of years.
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Glad to hear something positive out of you touché… lol… glad we can play nice! Thx…
266 sailfish twin 200 hpdi