CAPTAIN DAVE SUTTON ON SALTWATER FISHING WITH SPIKE-IT
Dolphin on Spike-It Soft Plastics
EDITOR'S
NOTE: Captain Dave Sutton of Homestead, Florida, a fishing
guide in the Everglades National Park, Biscayne Bay
National Park and the Upper Florida Keys, takes anglers
to permit, tarpon, redfish, snook, speckled trout, dolphin,
wahoo, grouper and snapper. Sutton, who has fished these
waters for 16 years and has guided for the last 6 years,
has discovered that using the new Spike-It products
for these saltwater fish pays off for him.
QUESTION: What Spike-It products do you use the most?
SUTTON: I like the Holographic soft-plastic baits the
most. I use them to catch a wide variety of fish under
many different circumstances. I believe these baits
have superior flash, and they're also very well-balanced.
Here's a classic example. This past weekend,
the last one in May, I'd just gotten a new 28-foot boat,
and my customers and I had a nice-sized school of dolphin
around the boat. We were trolling baits to try to get
a hookup with a fish. I told one of my clients to get
a rod and put a chunk (meaning a chunk of cut bait)
on and cast toward the school of dolphins. But apparently
all my client heard was, "Grab a rod, and start
chunking." So, he grabbed a spinning rod that had
a 6-inch Spike-It shad in the black and clear colors
on a jig head. After he made his cast and started his
retrieve, a big bull dolphin came over and attacked
the bait. My client caught the 20-pound dolphin on 15-pound
test line after a heck of a fight. I didn't really realize
what had happened until I gaffed the fish at the side
of the boat. When I started pulling the big bull dolphin
onto the boat, I looked down in the fish's mouth and
saw that Spike-It bait stuck to its jaw. I looked at
my angler and asked, "You threw a Spike-It bait
at this fish?" The angler looked back at me and
said, "Well, yes, isn't that what you suggested.
Anyway the fish ate it, didn't he?".
Ordinarily
when you hook up a dolphin when you're trolling, you
put the boat in neutral and start casting chunks of
cut-up ballyhoo to try to get the other dolphins in
the school to follow the dolphin on the line to the
boat and start eating the ballyhoo. We always leave
the hooked dolphin in the water to keep the school of
dolphin around the boat so we can continue to catch
dolphin. When I told my angler to throw out a chunk,
I meant for him to pick up a chunk of cut ballyhoo and
cast it out to the dolphins. However, he just grabbed
the spinning reel with the Spike-It bait on it, and
the fish took the bait. That 6-inch saltwater shad in
the black-and-clear color really did a number on that
dolphin. I'd never considered before casting those soft
plastics to schooling dolphin. But, I learned on this
trip just how deadly that bait could be. My angler said,
"Dave, I just cast the bait out and twitched my
rod a couple of times, and the dolphin attacked it."
My fisherman was using a 7-foot, medium-light, Quantum
spinning rod with a small spinning reel - definitely
not the rod I would have chosen for him to use to catch
the dolphin. However, once he had hooked up the fish
and got the dolphin to the boat, I don't guess it really
mattered on which rod he caught the fish.
I
also used the 5-inch Holographic grub in the chartreuse
color, and other anglers cast that bait out too. I believe
we caught as many dolphin on those Spike-It baits as
we would have caught on chunks of ballyhoo, and we possibly
caught more fish. I had just never considered using
Spike-It soft plastics when I was fishing for dolphin.
However, you better believe I'll have those Spike-It
Holographic minnows on my spinning tackle from now on
when we go after dolphin.
For more information on how you can fish with Captain
Dave Sutton, contact him at djsutton@bellsouth.net or
go to www.saltwater
flyfisherman.com. To learn more about Spike-It's
top-quality lures, paints and other fishing products
and the Color-C-Lector, go to www.ISpikeIt.com.
TOMORROW: JERKBAITS FOR JACK
CREVALLE
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