There are many reasons that people will go after dolphin fish, aka mahi mahi, mostly because you can catch them in a large quantity if you know what you are doing. But going out in the sea and actually catching mahi mahi can be a tedious task, you will spend a lot of money on fuel to go out there and catch them. If you are going for a large quanitity of dolphin, and for size, then you will have to go out quite a bit. When I am referring to ging out I am in referance of Marathon Key, because that is where my dad and I go out to get them. You are looking at atleast 7 miles to catch a school of fish. The further that you go out the better chance that you have to catch bigger and more fish, specifically mahi mahi.
The way that you catch dolphin, well first off you are going to need a power boat that can safely go out to sea, or in this case the gulf of mexico, the ideal milage out would be about 10 miles. Remember, the further that you go out the better chances you have of getting bigger fish. And not only that, the earlier in the morning that you are out there, the better chance you have also, think about it. If you get out there in the afternoon, most of the fish will already be either full, or already caught due to other fisherman that got out there earlier. So the earlier you get out there the better. The biggest mahi mahi that I have caught was weighing around 50 lbs, not bad seeing that the world record is jsut a little bit over 80 lbs. This was when me and my dad had woke up at 430 am, got all of the saltwater fishing tackle onto the boat, and we untied from the dock at about 5 am. We were roughly 12 miles off of marathon key at about 6 am, then we let loose about 7 heavy duty big game fishing rods, all rigged up for dolphin. What we used was ballyhoo, along with a flashy little lure tied to it. We were trolling for about 30 minutes before we got a hit, and there it was, I fought the dolphin for about 15 minutes before I landed it. My dad also had one that was on the hook, he had brought it up to the boat, and left it, as the smaller mahi mahi was swimming in distress, we immediatly threw some lines in with our spinning rods, with some squid as bait, and we caught about 6 schoolys in 20 minutes time. Schooly’s is another name for small mahi mahi. Below is a picture of the trophy fish that I caught.
