Key West Dive Charters Blue Water Charters Key West Diving

Sportfishing

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Sportfish action table

Of all the advantages there are to visiting the Keys, the top of the dance ticket is the open air aquarium that surrounds this tropical island. There is no location on this planet you can seek such a diverse array of fish in such a concentrated place. You can catch Tarpon, Bonefish, Snapper, Grouper, Marlin, Sailfish, Dolphin (That’s Mahi Mahi, not flipper) several species of Tuna, Kings, Wahoo, Cobia, Permit and Pompano, tons of reef fish, not to mention lobster, and all are within a short distance of Key West.

WE CATCH FISH!
We use Shimano TLD 25's with Pen 50 TW's in case the big one shows up.

We are fully-stocked with modern lightweight and medium weight tackle.

The 26 foot Paso Fino trolled at a leisurely 5 knots under leaden, threatening skies. The twin outboards burbled quietly, as we skirted a seaweed bed, eyes searching the horizon for any sign of feeding birds, the likely indicator of feeding fish. Suddenly, and without warning, the water behind the boat exploded in heart-stopping fury as 110 pounds of frantic sailfish crashed a ballyhoo bait and tailwalked 15 feet toward the boat. Of all the directions to run, toward the boat was not a good sign. Despite gunning the throttle and reeling furiously, the seven foot monster threw the hook and dived, out of sight and instantly off the treasured spot on the mantle over the fireplace.

As the web designer for Bluewater Charters Key West, I expressed to the skipper that I really needed to capture the essence of the Florida Keys fishing experience in order to accurately portray it on the website. Well, the captain didn’t buy that line- he knows I’ve fished these waters dozens of times, but, he did sympathize with my desires and set aside a Tuesday morning for a little dolphin fishing. I’ve been in Key West this time since late June (having lived here off and on since 1997), and had already missed two outings with my friend Stumpy, once due to bad weather on July 4 and the other to a bad motor a week later. Needless to day, I fairly jumped at the chance to play hooky on a Tuesday morning and go chase some dolphin. At this point, weather be dammed, and mechanicals stay out of the way, I wanted to fish. Bluewater’s “little” boat the nimble Paso Fino, is the perfect craft for a run out into the gulf. As it turned out I spoke a little too fast in regards to the weather, as Key West, truly the driest place in Florida, was under a little tropical wave on Tuesday morning and it looked like if I wanted to go fishing, I was going to get wet. So, I wore swim trunks instead of shorts and met at the Paso Fino, docked at the Galleon Marina promptly at 645 am. Joining us was, Robby, who is a top notch charterboat captain, and a handy person to have around. We pulled out of the harbor and headed for the “Wall”, the deep drop off shelf in the Gulfstream about 25 miles due south of Key West. At that point the water depth drops from about 800 feet to over 1800. The water change of the gulf stream, and the colliding currents usually lies a raft of seaweed over this point. Little fishies live in the weeds, little dolphin eat the little fishies and bigger fish eat the little dolphin.

Finding the wall is doable with a GPS. Finding the weedline is done by sight. Finding fish is done by chance, and good eyesight. You look for the weeds, and any seabirds that might be working bait, and troll along that line of seaweed. It was cloudy and not too breezy – yet – and fishing conditions were excellent, at least for the fishermen. We trolled for a half hour with no success, then we had the sailfish wake up the morning with 10 seconds of frantic action. Good for circulation perhaps, but not any contribution to the ice chest, or in the case of the sailfish, the camera. Perhaps 20 minutes later Robby spotted two frigate birds that were actively working on the surface, sure sign that there was something underneath feeding, and providing scraps for the Frigate. Most people would have not even seen the little dark specs a mile and a half away. Robby spotted the birds and even reported seeing fish flashing underneath them. This guy must eat a lot of carrots. We picked up the baits and headed over to the birds. The water was absolutely full of “schoolie” dolphin (Mahi Mahi, not flipper), young fish, probably born this year and weighing four to six pounds. Schoolies are ravenous feeders and will hit anything that is put in the water. We broke out the spin tackle and put a half dozen in the freezer as “anti-skunk” insurance. It’s funny. Catching four to six pound largemouth bass, which, by the way, don’t fight 1/3 as hard as these baby dolphin, would merit a half hour Saturday television program. Out here, thanks to a good crew, they were almost a given, and we could have sunk the boat with them had we decided to stay there, but we were looking for bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

After 20 minutes of fun, we again baited up the trolling equipment and moved away from the schoolies. Almost immediately I hooked up something definitely more sizable, and set the hook into a nice “cow” (female) dolphin, which gave us a good aerial display, and a 10 minute fight before coming under the gaff. She weighed about 15 pounds and was more like what we were looking for. We baited up again and hooked up immediately, this time a “bull” dolphin, about the same size but with a lot more fight. There is nothing prettier than a dolphin, and the bull flashed incredible golden colors, hence the Spanish name for the fish Dorado, as he was gaffed and put on ice next to his girlfriend. They made a nice couple, and in fact, we planned to invite them for dinner later this week.

Unfortunately the weather started closing in and the skipper wanted to take no chances with the storm, and anyway, he doesn’t look that much like George Clooney. We moved away from the Wall, and south to see if we might find some bigger fish. We came across another flock of feeding birds, and another huge school of young dolphin, this time in the 6-8 pound range, and again enjoyed the feeding frenzy for a while, all the time watching the weather. Finally discretion got the better part of valor and we decided to beat a retreat to Key West. In order to get home, unless we wanted to become reverse boat people and take up residence in Havana, was by going through the storm, and we had to flog through four foot seas and 25 knot winds in a driving rainstorm to get back to the harbor. We brought the Paso Fino through the weather and, guided by his state of the art electronics, the Key West harbor appeared out of the gloom right in front of us. All in all, despite the weather, we had an excellent morning, and likely caught more fish than anyone out there. Robbie filleted the fish for me, and I enjoyed fresh caught Mahi that night in my suite with kitchen at Ocean Key. Thanks Bluewater crew for a great day.