05-30-2002, 02:15 AM
When today's trip was being set up, Clint said it would sure be nice to catch a few dolphin and have some fish to take home. So, our mission for today was to find and catch some dolphin. While we were searching for bait, a friend came by and gave me a scoop of herring and pilchards. It was a great start and we went all the way down the beach and finished off catching bait. The wind finally calmed down, so running and gunning was very comfortable. Our first stop was a weed line in 420' off the hotels on Key Biscayne. Slow trolling down the line produced 1 schoolie sized fish. Moving further out, we caught 2 more fish under some terns in 600'. Pushing still further offshore to 1100', we found our first decent school of fish in the 4 - 8 pound range. A 15 pounder swam up and ate our live pilchard and after a brief fight, it was added to our fish box. Moving south along the 1100' line, we found more birds and the mother load of fish. Clint's friends Jack and Ernie said they had never seen anything like it. We had about 100 fish around the boat in the 4 - 30 pound class. We quite fishing at 1:00 pm and went in early to eat lunch before cleaning the fish. The half dozen fish in the 20 - 30 pound range and several in the 10 - 15 pound range gave everyone plenty of fish to take home. Mission accomplished. This was the first good day of dolphin fishing this season for me. It was nice to see several real weed lines and trash floating. It finally appears that the dolphin season is kicking into gear.<br><br>Captain Dave Kostyo<br>Knot Nancy Fishing Charters<br>305 620-5896 Charter<br>305 732-2628 Beeper<br>www.rnfl.com/knotnancy<br>nkostyo@bellsouth.net<br><br>