Floater Fishing -Beyond the Basics

From the Baja Book “Floater Fishing Beyond the Basics”.

Captain Meme with two nice, big dorados that we caught trolling “differently”: deep and well off of a floating kelp.

Graduate school for weed ann other floater fishing.
It is pretty mucho “dorado 101” to Hunt for dorado/Dolphin/Mahi-mahi under any kind of floater, so i am not making a big deal out of that here. Every magazine article on dorado covers weedlines kelp patties, etc. Over ando ver again. I don´t think that i need to waste the space beating that oft-beaten drum. But there are a few points that aren’t so Commonly discussed that i would like to go over.

First, remember that dorado and bait are no born under a floater and then spend their lives there. And they aren´t delivered to floaters every day by UPS. There is an EBB and flow of both baitfish and gamefish that takes place far below, around, under and between floaters that you need to take into consideration. This is especially so in areas where isn’t a lot of weed or there aren’t an extensive Lumber of any other kinds of floaters. It is here that so many fishermen mess up and miss out on some great dorado (we’ll settle on that name for this book) fishing, especially for the biggest ones. And the same thing applies to many other species.

Here are a few simple rules for dealing with a floater that go beyond the usual: “Drive by it. Look for dorado under it. If you see dorado, cast bait at them. When they quit biting or there’s nobody home, go looping fot another floater.” That is tradional wisdom that catches fish, but that leaves far too many, and many times far bigger ones out of equation. Here are some somple rules for correcting that:

- Don’t assume that there are no dorado (or other fish, like wahoo or tuna) under or around a floater just because you don’t see them or bait.

 - Don’t assume that just because there is bait under the floater, but you don’t see any gamefish, that there aren’t any around and you should move on.

- Both bait fish and the dorado and other fish that prey on them “play tag” with the floater and move up and down below and around it – many times far below and far away from it. Look for them before you give up on a floater, again, especially if there are only a few around.

- If you do not see dorado under the floater and you don’t meter any below it on your sonar, begin to broaden your search by trolling in ever-widening circles around the floater, keeping an eye peeled on both the sonar and looking for surface signs.

- Pay particular attention to the current break that your floater is most likely trapped along the edge of. It can be a virtual “dorado and other gamefish highway”.

- Be sure to troll a toad teaser when you do this. it will pull up deep fish. A spider on a downrigger or planer will actually hook up deep fish.

- Bully any spider fish that you hook up to the top as fast as you can. if it is a schooling species like dorado, tuna, or wahoo the rest of the school is likely to follow them up. that is typical behavior for all of them.

- Leave the surface bars out when you hook that deep fish. Most of the time the rest of the school will follow the hooked fish to the top and pounce on the bars as soon as they spot them.

- Have the pitch baits and chunks ready for the rest of the school toss some chunks to keep the rest of the school around while you deal with the hooked fish and bait the others with chunks or whole pitch baits when you are ready. This is a very regular event for those wise enough to try this (if you feel like pissing away money, buy and carry live chum instead of the chunks that work as well or better).

- How far should you circle out from the floater? That one i can’t answer for you. For me, if floaters were rare that day, i used to troll as much as a mile or even more from the floater, then troll upcurrent and along the current break that was almost always there and actually trapping the floater. It is also the direction the gamefish will travel back to the floater. Often enough, there were dorado on it that second time around.

- Superbars and spiders are great for trolling very close to weed and other kinds of floaters because, even though it looks the opposite, they hang up very rarely and are very weed-free, so you can run them very close to whatever it is that is floating without fear of snagging it.

These tricks produced plenty of dorado for us over and over again down in cabo. As noted, the deeper ones were usually the bigger units. The smaller dorado tend to stay closer to the surface. We also caught good numbers of yellowfin and wahoo doing this, along with more marlin than a surface-only troller could ever imagine.

A really big bull dorado and the pretty gal who caught him. This was a brute of a fish. As you can see, he was almost as big as this lovely lass who did him in! We caught a lot of very large dorado down in cabo, many of them both deep under kelp, or deep and well off of it. Fishing “dorado 101” style like the rest of the fleet did usually resulted in much smaller fish. We caught this one on a deep trolled spider about a quarter of a mile off of and along a current break that had trapped a kelp paddy that had a bunch of little dorito’s on it.

This fish was hooked up on he-man gear and this little gal honked him up to the top fast. Note the big, 80 wide international being trolled. That is the right medicine for bullying a big fish like this one up. The faster you do that, the more likely it is that others will follow it up to the top, so don’t troll your deep spider on light gear. In this case, a big cow followed the bull up and our gal’s husband pitched a bait and we caught her too. She was also a really big fish, but this little lady’s hubby wasn’t nearly as pretty as she was, so i’m sparing you a photo of him. I’m sure that you have seen pictures of a lot of cow dorado, but bulls with beautiful ladies like this one in it are rare, indeed!

Photo courtesy of Chris Badsy  “The right size reel – accurate 50w”

Another quality bull (that’s a big guy holding it) that was taken far away from a floater and a good reel choice for bullying deep dorado up.

This cabo fish was taken on a marlin lure out in wide open spaces. If you stop and think about it, you have probably caught a lot of dorado far away from any floaters, and some of them were probably real wall-bangers and hangers. That goes a long way toward dispelling any popular myths about these fish being found primarily under and around floaters. And you might have even noticed that dorado schools found under floaters are often (not always, of course) the smaller fish that if anything, the big, humongous bulls and cows actually feed on. The truth is, to a truly big bull, a five, six pound or even bigger dorado is dinner, not a companion. So get away from the pack of pre-schoolers practicing dorado 101 on the dinks and zero in on the big ones.

A great shot of a perfect florida bull taken well up current of a weedline by my pal, steve seiman. Steve is one big dude and so this fish is even bigger than he looks. This beauty wound up being a terrific mount. See the mouth on that thing? He’d have no problem gulping down a weed line first grader, would he? You betcha!

Another monster bull taken on a petrolero colored daisybar. This one was a half a mile upcurrent of a floating kelp with no fish on it.

Another look at that big puerto vallarta bull that doesn’t want to come home for dinner. Like the others, this one was well off of a kelp floater. (come on, kurt, pull on that sucker! Don’t worry, the leader is heavy duty, so lean on his ass and get him aboard, will ya?”).

Here is a dynamite way to check out both the surface and deeper water using a spider on the downrigger or planer and a daisybar up top. You have a choice of running the daisybar armed with a hook, or strictly as a teaser. Me, i prefer to have it armed if i am fishing schooling fish, unarmed if i’m after billfish.

Like i noted at the beginning of this chapter, fishing floaters is probably the most common way that the masses fish for dorado and huge numbers of them are caught that way. But it is a long way from the only way and if it’s the big bulls and cows you want, i urge you to step away from the masses and give the tips here regular tries. Believe me, they will pay off in some of those “jumpin’ geehossofats, look at the size of that bull!” and, “holy cow, look at all of those other ones that are with him!”

That’s nice work if you can get it, and you can! (and don’t forget that toad teaser! You’ll see why in an upcoming chapter.)