This weekend coming back from shopping we noticed as we were leaving the dinghy dock a big fish swimming under one of the docks…
Big fish here are pretty common as we have a hellacious number of real big Tarpon who hang out near the docks waiting for the sports-fisherman to clean their catch and throw the funky bits in the water. Sort of a Tarpon all-you-can-eat buffet!
However, as the first fish disappeared we noticed another and it was not a Tarpon but a Mahi Mahi and then we saw another…
Mahi Mahi (also called Dorado or Dolphin fish) are not fish you see very often within soundings and especially fish you don’t see at the dock in six feet of water. More than likely they followed one of the inter-island cargo boats or the ferry in and were just giving the neighborhood a quick look see before they headed back out to deep water.
Most cruisers, if they are going to fish, are mostly going to catch Mahi as they populate all of the worlds oceans and are something of the go to fish. Unlike the tunas and billfish, they are much hardier, quick breeding, and reach maturity quicker so they, while not exactly thriving, are not as in decline as other commercially harvested fish.
Fishing for Mahi, it pays to keep in mind that they like cover so shifting course to troll by a patch of grass or flotsam is a great way to find them and while they seem to like most trolled lures, the most consistent ones in my quiver are cedar plugs and the squid with feathers sort.