Every year, I wait for summertime to come to the Florida Keys. I love the summertime here. The traffic slows way down, the stores are easier to get in and out of, and you can even make a left-hand turn onto the Overseas Highway every now and then. But most of all, I wait for summertime fishing! Usually, calm seas prevail and remain that way for days on end and sunset is later, giving more quality time on the water.
There’s nothing I like better than running offshore, stopping at the first weed patch, throwing a couple handfuls of cut bait into the water and waiting for the mahi mahi to appear behind the boat. The next thing that happens is what I call Florida Keys mayhem. Sometimes, dozens of frantic mahi mahi fight to beat the rest of their school to the offered chunks of ballyhoo, bonita or whatever I might have grabbed from the freezer.
My wife and I don’t like to freeze fish. We prefer to eat only same-day-fresh fish. We’re spoiled. Most of my fishing buddies and I don’t catch more than we need to make one family dinner and maybe share a little fish with friends. This works out extremely well for us because when we feel like eating, or serving fish to visitors, it’s a perfect reason to go fishing. We only do it for the benefit of our wives and guests. Kind of like year-round Santa Clauses.
Often, we find ourselves throwing enough cut bait to keep the schools of mahi around the boat and then waiting for larger mahi or other curious predators, like wahoo, to arrive. Strangely enough, keeping the baits away from the marauding hordes of peanut-mahis or small, lightning fast schoolies is not as easy as one would think. Trying to target individual fish, meaning larger or more desirable fish, is a blast. And I guess just the idea of it being challenging makes it all the more satisfying.
When my buddy Dan and I headed offshore recently, we had visions of summertime mahi mahi mayhem on our minds. The marine forecast called for 2- to 3-foot seas. Before we even reached the reef, we were up against constant 4-footers with the occasional 6-footer. We chose a comfortable heading, at an angle to the waves, at trolling speed and deployed four trolling lines.
“What happened to our calm day?” I asked Dan.
“I don’t know.”
There were compact dark-gray cloud masses reaching for the heavens and dropping torrents of rain falling in fierce streaks to the surface of the 86-degree but dark and foreboding Atlantic Ocean. These small squalls created updrafts and disturbed surrounding waters. Waves, much larger than we had anticipated moved in changing and conflicting directions. Wind whistled through our ears. The outrigger lines hummed a soulful wail.
“At least there’s no sargassum weed to foul our baits!” Dan said, over the ocean commotion. Ah, the unfailing optimism of the offshore fisherman. Pow, one of the lines screeched from its reel. Pow, a second line came to life. Pow!
“Fish on,” I yelled. “Triple header.”
Three screeching lines, two anglers, 4- to 6-foot seas. Our fish put up valiant fights. We moved back and forth in the cockpit to prevent tangled lines. These felt like big fish. Reality started settling in as we battled with waves and our uncooperative denizens of the deep. None of them ever jumped behind the boat, so we assured each other they were not mahi mahi. The fight had gone on for a while and these fish hadn’t tired at all, making us think that our hopes of nabbing three oversized blackfin tunas were almost surely bonitas.
We released three vigorous bonitas, put the cockpit back in order, set the lines back out, sat down on the center helm seat and returned to the troll.
The seas settled a bit. A peanut-mahi hit one of our baits and was released. We were led to him by several birds circling low to the water. No fish followed the peanut to the boat, the birds flew away, and we soon headed deeper. Flocks of brilliant, white ibises passed overhead in undulating formations sometimes V-shaped, and other times in a long, single-file Florida Keys conga line arcing up and down, coming so close to the surface they disappeared in the troughs of cresting waves. I absolutely love it out here.
We kept fishing. We found a piece of debris in the water and ran the trolling lies close to it several times at different angles. Nothing. Small bar jacks and tripletails could be seen beneath the water’s surface. We spotted several birds close to the water and headed that way. We passed through the general area and looped around to pass through it again.
Zing! Line ran from the rod with a rigged ballyhoo on a heavy Iland Lure. Finally, green and gold flew into the air. Shiny sparkles of water fell to the surface. The mahi mahi jumped several times and greyhounded away from the boat. “Fish on. Fish on,” we both yelled and whooped it up a bit.
I worked the fish to the boat. This was a decent-sized fish. Not like the monster we were looking for, and he was alone with no followers. After a long, hard day of fishing, we took no chances. Dan dipped the landing net into the water then lifted the mahi mahi into the boat. We high-fived and put him gently into the ice-filled fish box.
Not long after bringing that fish onboard, we decided to call it a day. It was an uneventful trip back to Key Colony where we scrubbed the boat and fileted the fish. We both agreed that we had a great day on the water as usual and started making plans for the next journey.
We had same day fresh mahi mahi with leftovers for the next day’s lunch. Fabulous. There is no place I would rather be, and nothing I would rather do than live in the Florida Keys and fish my very own world-class fishing waters. And once again, I reiterate, “Life is good in the Florida Keys; life is very good in the Florida Keys.”
C.J. Geotis is a lifelong fisherman who followed his dream more than 20 years ago to live in the Florida Keys. His books, “Florida Keys Fish Stories,” and “Double-Edged Sword” are available at Amazon.com. He lives in Marathon with his wife, Loretta, and her Coca-Cola collection. His email is fishstoriescj@comcast.net.
