Bulls bay Sunday - one pass and 1/3 cooler then four porpoises showed up. They worked the poles ahead of us and shrimp stopped. Finally gave up at 1/2 cooler.
Any tactics for running them off?
pick up and move is about all that you can do
I literally abandoned one of my go to spots the last few years because it seems like each time I go there are 50+ dolphins just waiting to kill my poles. I went about a 1/4 mile away and across the channel and no dolphin. Mind blowing and I did about a half cooler Saturday. I go pretty close to the ocean. Were you closer to the ocean or the ICW?
Listen we tried something and it really worked with the dolphin. I read that an old timer used old nails in his bait. We used some rusted metal washers and they worked on Saturday! I didn’t feel really good about the nails…the old timer said, “Have you ever caught a dolphin on a hook?”
A pod of 5 on Saturday were around the poles and just knew they took all the bait. When I ran my run I got shrimp on all poles and we coolered out for the day. I don’t know if it was the washers but normally when we see the bait is gone on at least 3 poles. Crabby Patties now have washers.
Creek Girl
www.Heather-Jordan.com
Vibrant Coastal Artist
I have never had a dolphin eat a bait ball…at least while using Bait Binder. I know this to be true because we seem to always have dolphins running our poles and at the same time we pull bait balls out of the water all the time with the net. So, if Dolphins were eating the bait then we would never pull them out of the water. As well we still caught a cooler of shrimp the other night and the dolphins were on the poles prior to us baiting. In my opinion the Dolphins do not impact the shrimping. To me they only eat the bycatch…pinfish, spot, etc.
Had dolphins on my poles for a good bit of my trip 2 weeks ago…didn’t see any difference in shrimp count…coolered.
'a stranger is just a friend i havent met yet’jt