Dolphin Fishing in Key West

One of our favorite family vacations that I take with my parents is dolphin fishing in Key West. We’re not talking about Flipper kind of dolphin… we’re talking about delicious Mahi Mahi. They’re absolutely beautiful fish if you’ve never seen them before… bright greens, blues, and yellows. We went with the same guide we’ve been using for quite some time now… he’s absolutely awesome at what he does. We’ve never gone out without coming back with a boat full of fish and this year was no different. We go out of Hurricane Hole Marina that’s located just before the bridge to get onto Key West. We got there bright and early in the morning ready to go. We proceeded to go out 35 miles offshore in search of these gorgeous fish. When you’re that far out it’s hard to even imagine where the fish could be! There’s a couple of signs you look for: birds diving catching bait, stirs on the surface, lots of seaweed on the surface, and any kind of floating debris like wood. You look for these because the baitfish like to take cover under the seaweed and floating debris and if there’s baitfish… there’s dolphin! We drive around until we finally see some seaweed and put out some lines behind us while going slow. Within a few minutes we had a bite! As we were reeling the fish in we see about 15-20 dolphin following behind. They usually travel in groups called “schools”. We throw out some more lines and one by one start catching them all. Our poor fishing guide was going from me to my mom to my dad to my brother all helping us get the fish off the hook and into the cooler. We were catching so many that we were throwing away ones that weren’t very large. After about 40 minutes of intense dolphin fishing they stopped biting and we were on our way. We came across a very large patch of seaweed and set the lines again. Within a minute or two we already had one on and reeling it up. The entire school followed again. Looking down into the blueberry blue water you see flashes of the gorgeous fish underneath. It’s like nothing you can imagine it is so beautiful. I had a waterproof camera case so I tried snapping some pictures of the fish underneath the boat. Once again the school was biting everything we would put out. After we had our fill of fishing we headed back to the marina to clean the fish. If you ever get the chance to go down to Key West, fishing is definitely a must. Different fish are biting at different times of the year, but don’t worry… something is always biting. Enjoy the pics!

*all pictures were taken with my iPhone

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