To Catch Dolphin in the Northeast

Dolphin—or mahimahi—don’t always get the opportunity to show off their fierce drive. In many cases, they’re a fish that must be picked through on the road to bigger players, like tuna or marlin. Even a 20-plus-pound dolphin’s power won’t fully translate when you hook it on a heavy trolling outfit dragging a skirt 100 feet behind a moving boat. Dolphin were built for light tackle, and they have plenty of fans that use it to target them around the globe. These fish can be found in every ocean except the Arctic, and when you find them, there’s a good chance you did so near some form of shade-producing surface structure. In the Caribbean, that’s often a thick mat of sargasso weed. In the Gulf, it’s an offshore oil rig. We don’t have either of those in the Northeast, but we do have near-endless fields of lobster pot markers.