MIAMI — You almost can’t tell it’s December in South Florida by the abundant dolphin fishing from the Keys through Palm Beach.
Most years, by the time South Floridians are roasting turkeys, crowding Black Friday sales and dusting off artificial Christmas trees, the mahis mostly are gone, prompting the angling community to switch efforts to the pursuit of sailfish and other species.
But this late fall, while sailfish are appearing on cue in good numbers, so are the mahis, which anglers believe is weird — but in a good way.
Since the middle of last month, fishermen have reported limit catches of the tasty pelagics — ranging from sublegal schoolies all the way up to more than 60 pounds.
“Normally in November, we caught three, four, five dolphin in a day,” said captain Jim Sharpe, owner of the charterboat Sea Boots in Summerland Key and author of a how-to book on dolphin fishing. “Now by 10, 11 in the morning, we’ve been limiting out. November was better by far than in the late summer. The high 40s, 50s, 60s [pounds] have been rampant.”
Agreed Miami charter captain Jimbo Thomas of the Thomas Flyer: “In the last two to three weeks, it’s been as good as it’s been all year.”
And, even better, anglers and captains say, they don’t have to go very far offshore to find fish. Instead of motoring 20 miles out, many are finding their quarry in waters from 100 to 300 feet deep.
There is considerable speculation on the reasons for this late-season bonanza: a surplus of sargassum — maize-colored floating algae that serves as habitat for dolphin and many other forms of marine life — in the Caribbean after late-summer tropical storms; the close proximity of the northerly flowing Gulf Stream to mainland southeast Florida and the Keys; and cold weather in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States
Don Hammond, a South Carolina fisheries biologist who has run a worldwide dolphin tagging program since 2002, said huge mats of sargassum have showed up in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Caribbean, harboring large numbers of dolphin. The abundance of dolphin has allowed University of Puerto Rico doctoral student Wessley Mertin to implant several with satellite tags, which tell the exact path the fish swims and how deep it goes. In addition, 130 more have received external tags.
Hammond speculates on whether the surplus of floating weed in the Caribbean harboring larger-than-usual numbers of mahis means more fish and algae are riding the Gulf Stream north for South Florida fishermen to encounter them.
“Is it because of sargassum moving through the Florida Straits?” Hammond said. “When you have a fish capable of circumnavigation within a year, you have to have information from various places in the North Atlantic if you’re going to have good comprehensive knowledge of its movements and migrations.”
Hammond said more than 13,000 dolphin have been tagged since he launched the study, averaging a return rate of a little over 2 percent. He’s hoping recent tagging success in the Caribbean will lead to “closing the gap” in dolphin movement patterns.
“We have shown that fish from South Carolina and Florida have showed up off Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic that fish from the East Coast will move south,” he said. “But we have never shown how they come back.”
South Florida fishermen say they have not seen any big increase in sargassum in the Florida Straits this year compared with previous years.
Sharpe believes the mahi mob is more the result of water temperatures in the Straits staying between 78 and 82 degrees, which he considers ideal for finding them.
Oceanographer Mitch Roffer, who operates an ocean fishing forecasting service in Melbourne, said a combination of weather and ocean currents is responsible for the late-season bumper crop in southeast Florida.
Roffer noted that in late spring and early summer when dolphin historically have been abundant here, they were few and far between, and that was likely because the Loop Current — a pinwheel of warm Gulf of Mexico water that swirls between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba, heads north and then loops west and south before exiting into the Straits — was located farther north than usual. That meant it took the fish longer to make their way from the Caribbean into the Straits because they got washed into the north-central Gulf.
As the summer wore on and turned to fall, the Loop Current drifted much farther south, Roffer said, bringing more fish directly into the Straits, which is happening today.
“Even though an eddy is forming, there is plenty of exchange from the Yucatan into the Keys and I think it’s bringing a supply of dolphin that people typically don’t see,” Roffer said.
And he says dolphin that may have lingered off the mid-Atlantic because of moderate temperatures in early fall now are being driven south by wintry weather.
“It makes sense; it’s not a big mystery,” Roffer said. “The late fall and the Loop Current flowing south, you’re going to get more dolphin than usual.”
Whatever, says Thomas.
“The last six weeks have been exceptionally good,” the captain said. “Be nice if it keeps up like that.”
