Catch More Mahi-Mahi with SST

Mahi-mahi are awesome oceanic fish – they’re plentiful and usually willing to bite, they taste great, they fight hard and make acrobatic leaps through the air, and few fish can hold a candle to them when it comes to how gorgeous they are. But it can take a long run far out into the Gulf to catch them with any regularity, and there will be days when even the mahi seem tough to locate. Considering those long runs – and the fuel bills that go along with them – a savvy mahi angler will use every tool at his or her disposal to stack the deck in their favor before they ever leave the dock.

The day this photo was taken we chose our destination based in part on taking a look at SiriusXM Fish Mapping, which is sort of an expanded from of sea surface temperature (SST) charts. There are lots of SST services out there, which give you color-coded water temperature boundaries and breaks. These breaks form at boundaries between different bodies of water swirling around and colliding with each other. Spot a location where there’s a break of two or three degrees or more, and there’s a good chance fish will be in the neighborhood. Fish Mapping takes things several steps further by adding in fish location predictions made by marine biologists, providing chlorophyll charts, including water temps down to 30 meters, and even more, and everyone can choose whatever SST service they’d like, but the critical thing here is to make sure you do use one. Check for the latest shots as close to your departure time as possible, and look for those breaks.

Interpreting these charts is to some degree an art form, but as a general rule of thumb simply look for the most dramatic breaks in the shortest distances possible. A five-degree break is certainly better than a two-degree change, but a two-degree change that’s sharp as a cliff can be a lot better than a five degree break that’s spread over three miles. When you spot a significant break that intersects with some form of structure, you have a potential gold mine – and now you know exactly where to point the bow.