If hours of fun resulting in many tasty meals is your idea of the perfect offshore trip, target chicken dolphin on your next outing to the blue water.
Came late summer, and Eddie finally sprang for that 22-foot Pro-line he’d been mooning over since he moved back down from up north, where he’d migrated after LSU.
Now he was pumped to get his boat out on the water.
“How ’bout next weekend?” he asked Pelayo and me as we perused the impressive martial arts wares at a Kenner gun-show booth. “Man, I’m ready to take it out for some serious deep-sea fishin’. That’s why I got that deep V.”
“Deep-sea fishing, huh?” Pelayo laughed as he turned to me, stressing every syllable. “You can tell this guy’s been away for TOO long,” and he pointed at Eddie with his chin. “Hate to break the news to ya, Ed, but no such thing anymore. No such thing as deep-sea-fishing. It’s called blue-water fishing nowadays. Got it?”
Eddie frowned for a second then took a hearty chug from his $5 draft beer.
“Who cares?” he finally gasped. “Who cares WHAT they call it. Point is, I’m ready to head out to the rigs and load up on some white trout, some croakers, some red snapper — to crank those suckers up two at a time.”
“Boy oh boy,” Pelayo was shaking his head now, looking at the ground and chuckling.
“And maybe some big summer kings!” Eddie was getting pumped up now. “They’re always bigger in the summer. Just put a white trout on the big pole, cast it out and stick it in the holder, then go back to cranking up bottom fish, back to filling the box.
“Next thing ya know: click-click-click WERRREEEEN! Grab that big pole outta the holder and set the hook! Now start duking it out with a monster summer king!”
Suddenly Eddie plopped his $5 draft beer clumsily on the counter of the booth, and plunged into blow-by-blow pantomime of the process, pumping and reeling, pumping and reeling, grimacing the whole time, even with sound effects.
“Get the gaff!” Eddie yelled as people started staring. “Get the gaff!”
But I had my eye on the stern-faced vendor at the martial-arts booth. He was very methodically wiping his counter free from the $5 beer splashings. He didn’t miss a drop. He even picked up the shiny “double-trouble” throwing knife we’d been admiring a few seconds before and wiped it down. His face was impassive, but that’s the nature of these martial arts people, I hear. Total control. No emotion.
Finally the vendor picked up the nunchucks with engraved cobras and started wiping them down while staring coldly at Eddie. A minute before, he’d been displaying those nunchucks with much pride. I was stunned as he explained the terrible damage two pieces of wood attached by a little chain could inflict if wielded by the right hands. He even showed how the cobras on each hard-wooden end of the nunchucks were identical to the ones he had tattooed on each of his massive shoulders. He seemed a definite expert in his field. And this seemed a weapon very close to his heart.
Eddie was oblivious to his surroundings. He was still fighting his king mackerel. Finally he landed it.
“Whoo!” he gasped. “I need me a brewskie!”and he turned to his beer, which was gone. “Hey?” he frowned. “What the…?”
The vendor, still holding the nunchucks, stared straight at Eddie.
“I had a beer right…?” Eddie pointed and started walking over.
“”I took the last gulp,” I said quickly while grabbing him by the shoulder and turning him. “It was almost finished, Eddie. Getting warm too. Come on. Let’s go. I need one too. This round’s on me.”
“Boy oh boy” Pelayo snorted again as we stood in the $5 beer line. “You gotta lot of catching up to do Eddie, my man, a LOTTA catching up. But sure, with good weather let’s get out in the Gulf this weekend, try out your boat and see what we can haul up at the deep West Delta rigs.”
“I’m game,” I nodded in assent.
In minutes, Eddie had his attention riveted by a gorgeous Beretta over and under, and Pelayo took me aside.
“I hear the rip’s in close,” he shrugged. “Ten, 12 miles outta Southwest Pass, they say. Depending on how it loops around, we could probably catch it 15-20 miles or so outta Empire jetties.
“I know, I know — that rip’s pretty unpredictable. It changes from day to day. Goes in. Goes out. Could be tight or scattered. But heck, let’s go out with Eddie. He’ll probably want to go out to the WD 90s, 70s, where he used to go on the Miss Mississippi, Cougar, Early Bird, his old man’s boat, etc. That should be just around where the rip is.
“So after he realizes there ain’t no more bottom fishing, we’ll hit the rip with medium spinning tackle and shad rigs and have a BLAST with the chicken dolphin. This is the time of year for it. The rip’s usually in closest right now.”
“Sounds good,” and I raised my $5 draft in a toast.
So the following Saturday, we hit the Gulf out of the Empire jetties and met a totally flat sea — not a ripple, barely a swell. Whoo-boy. We were in for a serious scorcher.
But our plan seemed to be holding. With these conditions, the blue or dark-green water should still be in close, and the rip tight. The Gulf was so calm, the ride so smooth, that I managed to stretch out on Eddie’s bean-bag chairs and actually snooze out.
I awoke with Pelayo kicking me in the leg. He was grinning widely and pointing at the water.
“The rip,” he yelled. “Check it out! A beautiful rip!”
I got up with a groan, looked behind us, and there it was. We’d just busted through a solid 10-yard-wide line of sargassum. The water went from green to a gorgeous dark blue. Our wake was pure white. I would have loved to stop right there and start trolling.
But Eddie simply shrugged. Not much small-boat rip fishing back in the 70s and 80s.
He was zeroing in on the WD 70s that loomed just ahead. Looked like Pelayo had nailed it. Amazingly, the rip was right where we expected.
Bottom fishing for two hours at three platforms with both pogies and squid yielded two undersized snapper, one beeliner, three hardtails and a cusk eel. I put on a small hook and a small chunk of squid for triggerfish, and even bombed out with them. I tried chumming for mangroves, and we nailed two before they quit.
“It’s hopeless, Eddie,” I finally snorted. “We wanted you to see for yourself. But like we tried to tell ya — there just ain’t no more bottom fishing out here, not like in the old days.
“Nowadays, all the charters go WAY out, and after stuff like tuna, wahoo, amberjack. No more of that bottom meat-fishing like we did during high-school and college. Whaddaya say we go get some meat along that rip, in the form of chicken dolphin, maybe a coupla tripletail?
“Meat and FUN!” Pelayo added as he put away the heavy pole and grabbed the rig hook.
“Well, we got nothing to lose now,” Eddie said as he cranked the engine.
A mile run, and we hit the rip.
“Now here’s a blast from the past that DOES still work, Eddie!” Pelayo said as he attached tandem shad rigs to our redfish spinning outfits. “Yes sir, the old reliable shad rigs!”
You’ll catch chicken dolphin on just about any small plastic feather jig, sparkle beetles, cocahoes — the whole bit. But when all is said and done, we find that shad rigs work best.
Chicken dolphin have small mouths. We always have a supply of the old-timey shad rigs on hand, the ones with the small hooks. For pompano at the shallow rigs, we’ll sweeten them up with a piece of shrimp. For chicken dolphin, we’ll troll with them, maybe sweeten them up when we hit a school.
Interestingly, what we call chicken dolphin aren’t juvenile versions of bull and cow dolphin. These chickens are actually a different species altogether named pompano dolphin that rarely get bigger than over 3 or 4 pounds.
Pelayo cast out one pole, and I cast out another. We let out maybe 40 feet of line, and plunked them in the holders. Not much sophisticated gadgetry involved here.
We hadn’t been trolling for 10 minutes on the outside of the rip when my pole dipped. I yanked it out, tightened the drag and reared back just as the chicken dolphin went airborne,
“SAW THAT?” I whooped, then I heard a reel singing behind me.
“HERE TOO!” Pelayo yelled. “Look at that sucker go!”
And I turned around to see TWO dolphin come spinning out of the water.
“I GOT TWO!” Pelayo roared. “Kill the motor, Eddie, or idle! We’re on a school here for sure! Eddie, cast out with that other pole I rigged up. We’re ON ’EM, my man!”
I watched Eddie’s shad rigs plop in right next to where Pelayo’s two dolphin went airborne again. Eddie had barely flipped his bail when he was whooping and cranking and watching his own dolphin shaking its head crazily after it rocketed from the blue water.
Eddie had a grin on his face the whole time. This was a new treat for him.
It was unreal. All three of us were on fish. And every one of these fish was spending more time out of the water than in it. You talk about a blast! The look on Eddie’s face said it all.
“Beats cranking up a bull-croaker from 150 feet, huh Eddie?” I whooped as I finally swung my flipping, flopping prize aboard and proceeded to christen Eddie’s boat with a nasty splashing of dolphin blood that splattered everything from his canopy to his transom.
Next came Pelayo’s duo, which splattered me along with the immaculate white boat. By the time we got them boxed, the boat looked like it had chicken pox. Eddie swung his fish in, grabbed it and looked around.
“That’s what that hose is for, gentlemen! But don’t sweat it for now. Let’s catch more fish,” Eddie said as he unhooked his. “Wow, look at those colors.”
“The wood duck of the fish clan,” Pelayo quipped. “That’s what my cousin from Miami calls ’em.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “But we goofed!” I suddenly grimaced. “We forgot to keep one of these in the water!”
Schools of chicken dolphin are notoriously fickle and nomadic, 10 times worse even than school trout under the birds. Luckily, Pelayo nailed one three cranks into his next cast.
“Leave that one in the water!” I yelled while casting.
“I know,” Pelayo nodded without looking back. “I was thinking the same thing. Gotta do that, Eddie.” Pelayo explained. “Keeps the others ones around.”
“Whatever. These things are a riot,” Eddie shrugged as he cast out again.
My second cast drew a blank so I went for the pogie bucket and started slashing mercilessly with the knife — I mean hacking away. Pelayo was wrapping his line around a cleat to keep his dolphin in the water, and you could see several more darting around it. So I chunked out half a bucket of chopped pogies into water around them.
“Good thinking!” Pelayo said. “Chumming’ll keep ’em around a little longer for sure.
“Way to go, Ed.” Pelayo slapped Eddie on the back as he reared back into another fish and it sailed into the air.
We could look down through the blue water and see the frenzy in action, almost like an aquarium. Pelayo and I both landed another pair, and we were sitting there wiping our hands and staring into the water when — “SAW THAT?” — Pelayo suddenly yelled.
“I saw SOMETHING!” I gasped. “Something big!”
“THERE! AGAIN! It’s a bull dolphin!” Pelayo shrieked. Get the big pole! Hurry!”
But Pelayo was reaching for it himself. Luckily it already had a big yellow and green feather jig on it. I’d been casting it around the rigs, trying to coax up a cobia to no avail. Maybe now it would earn it’s keep.
“Sweeten it up with a whole squid!” I yelled as Pelayo prepared to cast. “Dolphin love squid — squid and flying fish are their favorites! I’ll go ahead and let you have this ONE squid,” I laughed. “The rest I’m frying up tonight.”
Pelayo reached into the bucket, jerked one out and hooked it through the tail. He cast in the direction we’d last seen the big dolphin streak off. He cranked twice, and was fumbling with the drag on the big spinning reel when — “WHOOOAA!” — the big sucker whacked it. Pelayo set his feet and held on for dear life.
“That’s GOTTA be him! That’s….!” and just then the beautiful beast burst from the water to vindicate me, a mighty leap that took him 6 feet into the air, his brilliant flanks shimmering in the sun. He hit the water, almost ripped Pelayo’s arms out at the sockets and rocketed skyward again.
Pelayo was mute, his lips compressed and his sweaty face contorted in a hard grimace.
Eddie was swinging his fish aboard and left it to flop around as he moved in to catch the show, which was riveting. There’s just no acrobat to match a bull dolphin. Any fish that makes its living chasing and catching flying fish has got to be pretty agile itself.
“These suckers re worse than ladyfish!” Eddie laughed. “Unreal!”
Pelayo finally found himself on the bow, the pole high overhead, and the butt of the pole jammed into his hip. The brute, leaped and lunged for another 20 minutes until I reached down with the gaff.
One trip in his new boat, and Eddie forgot all about his croakers and white trout. Now he has himself a “blue-water” fishing boat.
Humberto Fontova is author of The Hellpig Hunt (discounted copies available by calling 800-538-4355) and the newly released Fidel; Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, described as “Absolutely devastating! An enlightening read you’ll never forget,” by David Limbaugh, and “A great book about Castro and the Hollywood pinheads who admire him,” by Bill O’Reilly.
