We have now been in Mexico for two weeks. In eleven days of fishing we have tagged 111 dolphin and one wahoo. Plus we placed a Microwave Telemetry pop-up satellite tag on a 58 inch male dolphin. This was only the 5th sat tag ever placed on a dolphin. 76 of the tags were deployed during our first three days when schools of small dolphin were still in the area. During the last 8 days of fishing we have caught much larger dolphin, but did not find any big schools.
We tried deep dropping on a few different spots south of the island and on Arrowsmith bank. We caught a wide variety of fish including a pink porgey, tilefish, button snapper, 2 black snapper, and 3 mystic groupers. The last drop of the day we pulled up this ugly brute pictured below. Its a large mystic which weighed close to 50 lbs.
After several straight days of fishing it was time for a short break. We spent today snorkeling on a few of the reefs surrounding the island and relaxed a bit by the pool. Tomorrow we are going out trolling again to tag additional dolphin. The fish are large and difficult to tag but these are the ones we were targeting on this trip. We are using circle hooks on dolphin today. In the past days we have been using J hooks knowing we could hook them fast without a drop back, get a simple mouth hook and release them without injury. One of the consequences of using J hooks is gut hooks and a 30 percent chance of mortality. We will explore how these circle hooks work today using drop back techniques and report back.
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