Charlie. Every angler should have a Charlie in their life at some point. Charlie was and still is the quintessential sportsman. From fishing South Florida to hunting caribou in Canada, Charlie is about as good as they come.
He grew up to pilot a seagoing tug in his father’s business. I believe the Atlas tug out of Miami was one that he captained. Pushing and pulling cargo barges up and down the east coast and into the Caribbean, Charlie had seen a lot of the sea in his life. Some of his stories of cargos and ships’ crew push the edge of the believability envelope, but they're fun to hear, and he loves telling them.
We fished together and hunted together in South Florida for a number of years back in the 1970's. I remember one duck-hunting trip where we both pulled and simultaneously fired on the same bird in a flock on three different occasions on the same morning. The “discussions” around the ownership of those three ducks continues to this day.
Caesar’s Creek was as it always was this early in the morning – slick as glass and crystal clear. We made the bends in the creek, passing the gathering of anchored sailboats to the side. A favorite nude anchorage at the time, we sometimes surprised a young couple taking an early morning dip.
As we broke out into the channel that winds it’s way into Hawks Channel on the ocean side of Elliot Key, the sun was breaking just above the horizon. Clouds of orange and red hue parted the sun rays as we crossed the reef and Charlie backed the engine down to accommodate the three-foot seas. The SeaCraft performed as it always did - the finest ride on the ocean.
We looked for a weed line as we headed for the edge of the Gulfstream. Sargasso weed-lines are common in the ‘stream, and to a dolphin (mahi mahi) that means a food laden expressway on the water. We hit the deep blue water indicating we had found the edge of teh Gulfstream, but we didn’t find a weed line. A current rip was evident though, and Charlie idled down and angled the boat along side that rip.
We only put two rods out when we were dolphin fishing. There really was no need for any more. If a school crashed the baits, two rods were all we could handle anyway. In the fall we might add one more rod with a trolling feather and a handlined downrigger plane. Wahoo and blackfin tuna seemed to like that feather better than a skipped ballyhoo, and neither of us ever turned down a chance to put one of them in the ice chest.
Charlie adjusted the trolling speed to keep the ballyhoo baits just barely skipping as I put the two rods in the rod holder. We trolled with Penn 4/0 reels and fifty pound test line, not because the dolphin were that big, but because in the blue water, you never know what kind of fish may be waiting below.
A short time later, as we talked about the lack of weeds and wondered if we would even see a dolphin, it happened. Seemingly out of nowhere, a huge bull dolphin came leaping out of the water off our port bow. He was running full speed, a streaky blur of yellow, blue and green just under the surface as he headed for our two baits.
Out of the water one more time, he came down on one of the ballyhoo and began stripping line from the reel. If you have never seen a dolphin crash a bait spread, you have missed perhaps the most exciting, blood rushing experience in fishing. A fifty-pound fish moving at what seemed to be fifty miles an hour had just about broken the butt off the rod in the rod holder as he ran away from the boat.
