June 15 2009 -

Well, this is the time of year every offshore fishermen in the Florida Keys has been waiting for. The Dolphin bite has been excellent. We've been catching plenty of schoolie size Dolphin in the 5 to 10 lb. range with some fish over 20 lbs. the past few weeks.

Most of the Dolphin we've been finding have been migrating fish with Tuna birds working over them. Using binoculars, we can spot working birds up to 2 miles away. We like to troll artificial baits around the birds while also looking from the tower at swimming fish where we cast live bait in front of the fish. Once a couple of fish have been hooked we wait for the rest of the school to follow in behind the others. The anglers can then start casting baits at the other fish.

It works well to rotate each fish to the boat taking one while keeping one hooked up at all times. This helps to keep the other fish near the boat. It is quite common to catch 20 to 50 fish in just one school. Last Saturday my anglers Tim, Tyler, and Taylor Dougherty from Pembroke Pines Florida went Dolphin fishing with us. We ran twenty miles offshore and then started looking for birds.

We found alot of birds working, but they were following little bonita not Dolphin. Finally after a couple of hours of looking we found our first school of Dolphin. It was a decent school of fish and my anglers ended up catching 30 fish. We quickly reset all our lines and found another school of Dolphin right away. They caught 20 fish in that school and limited out. The last couple of days in Key Largo the fishing has been great and we can usually count on good Dolphin fishing through August.

The Swordfish have been on the prowl at night during the month of June. We fish for Swordfish about 20 miles offshore so it requires calm weather. Fortunaley the whole month of June has seen excellent weather with winds less than 10 miles an hour almost every night.

One trip 2 weeks ago we ended up landing a 350 pounder after a 2 1/2 hour battle. The fish ate a whole rigged dead squid about 300 ft under the surface. We like to fish for Swordfish using 80lb. standup tackle. We use rod belts and kidney harnesses so holding the rod is much easier. Swordfishing is good all year round, however the summer months have consistentley calmer weather making it easier planning a trip.