April 5 -- Diggin' the dolphin offshore

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Shawn Steele, down from St. Petersburg, and I found a nice, smooth day and headed offshore in search of dolphin. It's April and that means the big mahi should be moving along the East Coast. Anywhere from about 120 feet to 330 should hold the fish and some of the biggest ones of the year are caught this month.

I'd heard the Gulf Stream was only 10 miles out of the St. Lucie Inlet and that was where we were headed. Live bait in the wells and some strong braid on the reels and we were ready to go.

Shawn caught a small "sandwich" dolphin pretty soon after we started drifting in about 175 feet but he was a solo and barely big enough to bother cleaning so back in he went. Nothing happened for a while, unless you count a really cool funnel cloud spinning off the bottom of some storm clounds about 12 miles out!

We were moving a little deeper when I spotted a couple schools of flying fish scattering across the surface. It looked like they were jumping from the white caps, until I realized those white caps were a fish blowing up on the bait. We ran right to the explosions and, when we were about 100 feet away, you could see a decent-sized dolphin all lit up blue and green gobbling baits. We pitched a pilchard and a BIG live mullet and he came right to them, crunching the mullet hard. The bull spit the mullet, then jumped right back on it and then ate the pilchard as well, meaning we were both hooked into him at the same time. He jumped once and spit the pilchard, but kept the mullet and the hook.

A few more jumps and he was gaffed and iced. He weighed out between 35 and 40 pounds.