We all spend the summer searching for sargassum grass to catch mahi. So we found some, now what?
First you should determine that this is a live weed line. Watch under the grass for small baitfish. Look for birds searching for meals in the grass. If you troll a small feather or two you may start catching bar jacks, runners, small tuna and small mahi. If none of this occurs, you may want to work further offshore looking for live grass. Be watchful for more solid flotsam in the grass line. Buckets, boards, coils of rope and even large pieces of visquine can hold a lot of mahi, tripletails jacks and wahoo.
So we have found a live grass line. Our best bet is to troll south against the gulfstream current as we search for fish. We do this so at the end of the day we don’t find ourselves 50 miles north of home. However, for short periods we have a better chance of crossing paths with good fish by trolling with the current. I like to do this by slow trolling live baits at a knot or so for no more than an hour. Then I can run south to make up for lost ground.
Which side of the grass line should we troll? It is easier to troll the upwind side as the grass will be more compressed together. But, if we have a cross wind, then we can launch a kite and troll the unwind side behind the boat, and fish the downwind side with baits suspended from the kite.
When you are catching grass on everything, because there is grass everywhere, then the kite is king. You can troll long rubber eels, ballyhoo, belly strips or even long skirted lures from the kite without catching grass. Set your kite release clips a little tight. Rig your baits or lures with the hook way up in the forward part of the bait. Deploy your kite with your baits hanging in the air as you troll across the wind at regular trolling speed. And finally lower your baits till just the tails are skipping along the surface. You can troll through the thickest grass with no problem till that gamefish crashes your bait and the game is on.
Go enjoy the summer grass lines.
[easy-social-share]