The weather forecast for Monday was not favorable for offshore fishing in my boat. However, when we got up early on Monday there was NO wind. It was completely, positively dead flat calm. Recognizing that this could change on short notice I made an audible and changed our fishing plans to going offshore looking for Mahi along with bonito, amberjacks and yellow tail if the opportunities presented themselves. I ran SSW to 200 feet or so where we deployed a trolling spread of 5 lines plus a teaser. It was a busy cockpit. Unfortunately since I had heard an unfavorable wind forecast the day before I did not buy fresh ballyhoo trolling baits the night before and the store at the marina where we were at was closed so we had to rely entirely on artificial baits. We worked our way out to about 750 feet trolling over various interesting topographic features along the way with only one half-hearted strike from something that none of us saw. Knowing we had other things we wanted to do on the way back home given where we were (about 23 miles or so offshore) late morning we decided to loop back north towards some wrecks and things we wanted to check out for various things. We had not gone very far when one of my sons saw some small white birds diving and feeding on something on the surface near some scattered weeds. As I turned the boat in that general direction there was surface feeding activity from some as yet unknown species of fish. As we got closer my sons saw mahi flashing in and out of the area feeding on small little baitfish in the weeds. Previously I had rigged up two light spinning rods one with a jig head-sluggo type body and a bucktail jig – I told my sons to cast those baits toward the fish when we got close enough. Those baits got eaten almost immediately. It’s hard to recall the exact series of events at this point but over the next hour or so we fished several different schools of mahi in the area– at times there were 30 or more of them swimming around the boat. They were all generally about 10 lbs.or so. We hooked perhaps a dozen with 8 of them coming home with us.
I saw these fish do something that I’ve not encountered with Mahi before – they were both color and size specific in what they wanted to eat. Due to the fact that I was dealing with the boat and trying to get the trolling gear under control as well as trying to chum a little to keep the fish close to the boat after we found them it was still a while before I actually got to fish. At first I just tossed a live pinfish in the middle of several mahi. For a couple of minutes the mahi just swam around looking at the pinfish showing no real interest in eating it. Weird, very weird in my limited experience. One finally did eat it though so I then baited up and tossed them one with a hook. The situation more or less replayed itself with it taking a while before one finally ate it. I left that fish swimming beside the boat for a long time in an attempt to keep the school close by. In the meantime the sluggo body on the bait one of my sons had been using got torn up beyond being usable. It was a black with silver body color. He replaced it with a white body. They wouldn’t eat it! They’d follow it but not eat it. After a while he changed back to a dark color and bingo he hooked up. Meanwhile after watching them only reluctantly eat the pinfish I thought perhaps I should show them a squid…something I’ve never seen them turn down in the past. Hooked up an entire squid on a smaller circle hook(4/0 ?) with a fluorocarbon leader and tossed it to some swimming near the boat. One of them immediately swam over to it, looked it over and swam away a short distance before returning only to repeat the behavior. I was flabbergasted that it didn’t eat that squid. Meanwhile the fish I’d had on leash had self-released jumping around behind the boat so I grabbed another pin and tossed it out. It did get eaten and this fish I also left in the water swimming near the boat after fighting it for a bit. Since there were obviously a number of fish in the area, they weren’t particularly large and they seemed to want small baits anyway I decided to see if I could hook one on the fly. I rigged up the 8 weight that Jarrod gave me and tied on a small (tied on a #1 hook) streamer like fly I tied up with dark blue shoulders and silver flash over white. Presented it to a few fish and got the same reaction the white sluggo type bait got – they’d turn on it and follow it but not commit. Again somewhat amazed that they were being so picky I decided to try a different streamer type thing I’d tied up that had some dark green and gray colors to it. That they ate --- so long as I was stripping it for all I was worth. Reaction bite? Maybe – I dunno about that but I know it was fun! I caught a couple that way before we finally lost the schools for the last time.
When we finally lost the mahi schools the guys wanted to go on in towards our next target which was a wreck where I wanted to vertical jig for amberjack and bonito or whatever else might show up. We found the wreck and there were fish there but we were unsuccessful in getting one of them to eat in the 3 or 4 passes we made over the wreck before my sons gave up on me and we headed off to the next target which was yellowtail. I guess the vertical jigging thing is somewhat demanding so if you haven’t seen it work it’s easy to not be a believer.
I chose a patch reef location based on some info I’d gathered in advance for the trip and went there since it was on the way “home”. It was really kind of amazing in a way. When we drove up, chose a spot and got anchored there was not a boat in sight. However, within 10 minutes or so there were two other boats that drove up and anchored within 50-75 yards of us. All that ocean to choose from but they chose there at just that moment. Go figure. Oh well, it had to basically be a public number for me to have it in my list! Anyway, it didn’t take long for the yellowtail and other usual suspects to respond to the chum. I caught a few but the reality was that my sons were clearly not really into it so after an hour or so we picked up and headed in for the day. All in all a very good day in my book. No real big fish but a fun, fine adventure with my sons out on the big water with a number of different species caught. Learned something about mahi too. Speaking of which in the days since I’ve learned that apparently the mahi were behaving that way all over the area on that day and it was not specific to those particular schools.. Apparently they just do this sometimes and get really picky about what they want. I have never seen that behavior before in mahi. When I’ve run into them in the past they were always just eating machines. That evening we had dinner at a blue collar/locals type place that one of the guides I fished with a couple of years ago turned me on to. The name of the place is The Rusty Anchor. Good food at fair prices in a very comfortable environment. Definitely not a touristy place and I’ve never been served anything there that wasn’t good.
http://www.rustyanchor.com/A few photos from that day:
Trolling in the deep blue sea….notice how calm it was….we were several (10+) miles offshore when this was taken
One of the many flying fish we saw this day…oddly they were all singles though…something else I’d never seen before this day…I’ve seen lots of flyers but always in schools. I have no idea what, if anything, this meant though!
One of the mahi we caught this day….it was typical of all of them size wise.
Something we saw while still well offshore that I just thought was kind of neat. Sort of like a giant eye looking down on us. I assigned my own meaning to it, feel free to do the same.
As we were cleaning up the boat that afternoon I saw this on the motor cowling and at first wasn’t sure what it was. However I soon realized that it was a ballyhoo beak which was interesting since we’d had no natural ballyhoo in the boat that day. Obviously one of my “pets” that I’d kept on a leash at the back of the boat had thrown this up while jumping around and it just happened to land there. Also found an entire ballyhoo in one of the mahi I cleaned that afternoon. I wondered if maybe this had something to do with why they were being so picky and keying on small baits – namely they’d recently fed on larger more preferred prey items. Perhaps – who knows though.
I had to smile to myself when not long after we got back to the house I looked out and saw one of our sons on the boat with the hydro-glow over the side giving it a go again even though we had to be up early the next morning for our first day with the guide.
