401 Cay

Yes Hiltons or Roffs can help.. when you locate a rip.. either alor change or a temp break, chance are the different currents will have pushed some weeds and debris to form. So while these services dont show weeds per say, they will show you the areas that you are most likely to find them.

spiderjohn

We too are newbies but after a run to the nipple and trolling a few hours with nary a sign, we went with someone who knew something. Put all Ilander Black Holes out (blue/white/ red and white) with ballyhoo. We were pulling 5 lines. Caught some nice dolphin. The difference was this...

Only trolled by weed lines in blue/ green water near the 131 hole/ elbow.

As for outriggers, we put Taco Grand Slams on our boat - 15 ft. It isa 25 WACC Robalo and we opted against the 18 ft for stress on the fiberglass top. They work great and I plan to troll double lines on each ina couple of weeks. The black holes were great because they popped on the top and bubbled. The other Ilanders we had were bullets and didn't jet as much. We caught one nice fish that was hanging with the buddy that wa being caught. Dropped a dead ballyhoo on a spinning setup to nail it.

Main difference was the top water lures on nice spread around grass or other topwater debris.

Jarhead

Thanks for all the good advice fellas. My heads about to pop waiting to go try this stuff out.

reelthrill

A dolphin is one of the fastest growing fish in the sea, therefore it has to eat constantly. I think locating the dolphin is probably more important than what type of lure or bait to use. They are generally not very picky eaters.

dbyrd2100

Can't beat either a naked or skirted ballyhoo trolled over what ever structure youknow ofor until you find a weedline. Obviously, look for birds dipping.

Captain Woody Woods

In our spread, I don't think we have a single lure less than 14 inches long. Point being, we have found that when we specifically try to target mahi with smaller lures, we tend to catch smaller fish. A mahi has a voracious appetite, and will often attack a lure just as long as itself. Consequently, we pull all our bigass plastics with marlin primarily our target quary-but as a result, we also tend to weed out the bigger dolphin from the chickens. Generally the only mahis that attack our spread are your bigger fish in the 25 pound and up range. Sure you have the old adage "elephants eat peanuts," but I would rather pull big and catch big.

Bryan Bennett

When we head East for our bluewater fishing (I'm referring to last year, I guess, when there was some bluewater within 80 miles of the beach to the east), we go out of our way to prepare for the eventuality of meeting up with some big dolphin. My thought is that it is key to have a variety of natural bait to offer them. We take a box of squid, cigar minnows, and plenty of ballyhoo, and we take pains to capture a bunch of good livies like pinfish, threadfins, and alewives before we go out. We troll lots of blue/white lures with medium ballyhoo behind them, so as to mimic flying fish. Other colors work but we're partial to the blue/white. Once you get a bite or two in a specific location, it is worth stopping the boat and trying to figure out what they are hanging on. Once you do, break out the live baits on big spinning rods. Hardtails are alright, but if they are too big the dolphin will just mouth them and the bait comes out on the first jump. Pinners and alewives are choice, although I have caught several big dolphin just pitching a dead medium ballyhoo to them. When they won't eat the aforementioned stuff, get out a whole squid and stomp it in the bottom of the boat so that the guts and stuff ooze out of the mantle. Toss it out and twitch it a little. Usually a dolphin cannot resist a squid. Chumming with cut squid and ballyhoo works well, too.

A word about dolphin habitat: sargassum, in my experience, needs to be bright orange and floating high in the water to hold bait, and therefore dolphin. When we find those old brown, sunken mats of grass, we generally move on as this is dead grass and usually holds little life. Objects floating in a rip are usually better bait holders when they have some algae growing on them. And for me, the biggest attractor of big dolphin is anything wooden; a big, dead cypress log, rope spool, wooden pallet...for some reason the bait gets thick on wood and the dolphin are there, too. Last summer we also found some big bulls under a big blue tarp...in 400 feet of water! There are no fences out there...

Hope some of this helps, good luck to you and catch 'em up. Bryan Bennett, Sam's, (251) 981-4245

P.S. Someone mentioned birds...if you see a big frigate (man-o-war) bird circling above a weedline, nine times out of ten it has its eye on a big bull dolphin in the rip. The other one time it is a big blue marlin...either way you win!

Jarhead

Should I use a trolling weight in front of the lure, and if so, how far.. I had a weight in front of the lure that I caught all of the chicken Dolphin on. We had a few lines in the water and they only hit the one with the weight on it. But... from what I gather, these little dolphin will hit almost anything given the right circumstances so the fact that they hit this particular setup doesn't mean anything... right?

Captain Woody Woods

I say no. The only time I use a trolling weight is if I plan on doing more than 10 or so knots, and even then, I am only expecting wahoo.