In June 2021 my Dad, Uncle Jim, cousin Kane, and I participated in the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce Dolphin Tournament. This was my Dad’s 2nd time competing, but it was the first time for the rest of us. The game plan was to simply head out to deep water and start looking for structure that might be holding Dolphin. Unfortunately for us and our 21 foot Maritime Defiant, the winds were howling at about 20 – 25 mph. I believe this scared away a lot of people from competing, as the field seemed smaller compared to the last time my Dad competed. This was apparent in the fact that there was only one kid who competed in the kid’s division and won all the prizes! But this was not going to stop us because we had been looking forward to this trip all year. So out we went on the crack of dawn on day 1 to see what we could find.
Once we got to the edge of the reef and saw how rough out it was, we had to decide if we should start trolling now while we head out deep or try to keep moving and get out there faster. Captain John, with his 50 years of experience, said we should start trolling now. This made sense because we were going to have to go slow as we went out deep so we might as well troll while we go! Sure enough within 10 minutes of trolling, we hooked up with a 15lb Blackfin Tuna on the Halco diving lure. This was nice because there was a Blackfin Tuna sub-category in this Dolphin tournament and 15lbs was enough to win us that trophy. So Captain John’s intuition to start trolling worked out well and won us a prize.
A Tuna Trophy with a Mahi on it! 
15 pounder
After the Tuna bite, we slowly made our way South, all the way to the continental shelf, otherwise known as “the Wall.” There we found a massive weed line that had multiple boats trolling it. This was exactly what we wanted to see and it got our hopes up for a nice Dolphin to be around. At this point I was super sea sick and could not do anything to help our cause. I made the mistake of not eating anything for breakfast, so the heavy seas got the best of me and I had a nice puke off the side of the boat. My Dad, Uncle Jim, and Kane continued on fishing while I drove us around the weed line. After an hour or so of catching a few small dolphin, we finally hooked into something big as we drove away from the weed line getting ready to head in. Rumor has it that the big fish like to stay off the main weed line so this might have been a factor. The hit came on the same diving halco that caught the Tuna. Unfortunately the fish came off. It seems that the treble hooks on those lures have a tendency to come loose after fighting the fish for awhile. That was our last hit of the day as we had to head in to weigh our fish. We still had day 2 to try and redeem ourselves.
Day 2
Day 2 was just as rough weather wise. We went all the way to “The Wall” and did not see the big weed line from yesterday. Things were looking dire as we headed back in looking some significant weed lines. As we went in there were lots of thin lines of weeds heading west with the wind. Our Halco lures kept getting caught in the weeds and we actually ended up loosing two of them when their lines broke off. However we had a back up plan. We busted out the weedless skirted ballyhoo rigs that could be trolled all day long with out catching weeds. This is was essential in these conditions with weeds scattered about.
Kane and I were driving when we saw a nice bit of weeds heading West. So we turned the boat from our northern course and went west along the weeds for a bit. Uncle Jim woke from his nap to shake the weeds from one of the lines and to our surprise, a nice Dolphin was on the other end. My Dad secure the fish with a nice gaff job and we were able to save face with a 12.25 lb. Dolphin to bring to the weigh in. The fish initially put us in 4th place but was soon bumped to 5th as more boats came in to weigh their fish.
We might have been bumped from the Dolphin trophy prize, but we still won the 2 day fish aggregate calcutta bet. So overall we won a Tuna trophy (with a mahi on it) and a nice cash prize that pretty much covered all our expenses and then some. Not bad for our first tournament! We look forward to competing next year as it looks like this will be anew annual family tradition. See the full video for this story below and thanks for reading!
