Fall is when most offshore anglers think about catching sailfish, but for now they’re better off fishing for dolphin.
The dolphin bite in South Florida turned on during the summer and has not slowed.
“There’s still plenty of dolphin,” Capt. Skip Dana said. “They’re nicer fish, too, 10- to 15-pounders.
“There are sailfish around, but it’s still a little early. If you’re getting one or two sailfish a trip, that’s a good day. The ones that have been moving through here have been moving through deep: 400 feet.”
You can run that far or farther for dolphin until you find an edge or a weedline, but Dana said lots of nice-sized dolphin have been feeding on schools of ballyhoo around the reefs.
That means you need to watch for dolphin activity as soon as you head out the inlet.
Dana, who runs charters on his center console Pop-A-Top and also runs the Helen S and Fish City Pride drift boats at Hillsboro Inlet Marina, said the colorful, acrobatic fish are being caught as shallow as 50 or 60 feet. The most productive depths have been 120 to 150 feet.
“You’ll see birds working it and see ballyhoo getting pushed around,” Dana said.
When dolphin are keyed in on ballyhoo, they sometimes won’t bite any other bait.
Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to load your baitwell with ballyhoo before you fish for dolphin.
“This time of year you can anchor pretty much anywhere and put chum out and catch live ballyhoo,” Dana said. “They are literally everywhere from the beach on out.”
He suggested tying up to one of the six sets of mooring buoys off Broward County from Dania Beach to Pompano Beach.
Then put out a chum bag to attract ballyhoo behind your boat. Dana said he really likes Bionic Bait sardine chum.
“It’s ground real smooth, almost like a sardine puree,” he said, adding that he uses a fine mesh chum bag so the chum doesn’t go out too fast.
You can also use other types of chum, as well as cat food, oatmeal or crumbled saltine crackers.
“Usually in wintertime I always carry a Ziploc bag of oatmeal or a can of cat food,” Dana said.
When using the sardine chum, Dana said that once an oily slick appears behind the boat, he’ll toss out a little oatmeal, which floats, and brings the ballyhoo to the surface.
To catch them, he uses a long-shank No. 10 gold hook with a little strip of squid and a tiny float so he can drift it back into the chum.
Another technique is to use a sabiki rig, cutting off the bottom hook and using it with a light weight to drag it through the ballyhoos.
The baitfish are fragile, so Dana recommended using a de-hooking tool to drop them into the baitwell without touching them with your hands.
When he gets to where he’s seen dolphin activity, he puts out the ballyhoo on a 5-0 or 6-0 J hook.
He hooks a ballyhoo through its lower jaw and wraps a piece of copper wire that he’s already attached to the hook around the bait’s bill.
An even easier tactic is to cut a black or clear drinking straw into one-inch pieces and put a piece on the leader before you attach the hook. (If you have striped straws, color them with a black marker.)
After hooking the ballyhoo, slide the straw over its bill and the hook to keep them in place.
Dana slow-trolls the baits on 20-pound outfits with 40-pound monofilament leaders. Besides dolphin, that catches sailfish and Spanish mackerel.
“Let them out, however many baits you can fish comfortably without getting tangled, and bump the boat in and out of gear,” Dana said.
“You can look for bait showers or fish the edge. A lot of times you’ll see dolphin greyhounding through those ballyhoos.
“If you do, try to get in front of them or just east of them. If you can get offshore of them, they’ll run back into you.”
swaters@tribpub.com or @WatersOutdoors
