Mahi-mahi fishing can get quite chaotic, and when we were shooting the third episode of Got Bait? the chaos was just plain out of control. The dang fish tried to eat our underwater fish-cam. We had double, triple, and even quad hook-ups. At time, I found myself scuttling across the deck of the boat on all fours, chasing after multiple flipping, flopping fish. Wow.
As usual, the point of the endeavor was to find out which is better: bait, or lures. In this case, Team Bait used cut squid and fish chunks, while Team Lures went on the attack with soft plastic jigs and bucktails. (Which won, bait or lures? Hey—you’ve gotta watch it, to find that out). We participated in a CSS dolphinfish tagging study, and released a slew of freshly-tagged fish. And we learned some interesting new bailing tactics from our Guest Angler, Captain Larry Golden of the Thrill Seeker. But the most interesting thing, without question, was the underwater footage. Even as we filmed, we had no idea just how many fish were swarming around the boat. Then, when we played back some of the under-water footage… WOW!
As those of you who have been mahi fishing probably already know, this species loves to hang out around flotsam, which includes polyball floats. We fish four or five of these floats, and every one had literally dozens of fish swarming around it. Fishing just doesn’t get much better than this, folks – check out Got Bait? Mahi-Mahi Madness, and I’m betting you’ll agree.