SportFishing and Charters Forum - light tackle trolling

is there a way to fish offshore with light tackle? if i remember correctly i saw a video of someone trolling with spinning rods catching dolphin? i enjoy light tackle jigging in the chesapeake for stripers but i will be down hatteras the last week of august and wonder if there was other options to fish for dolphin and tuna and such without trolling around with 50w's.... i am assuming if you find a weedline you could cast lures into it in search for dolphin but other then that how can you fish offshore without trolling big rods and reels? thanks for any input

Snicol, I actually used to hook & line commercially years ago with very light gear (heaviest rod with only 30lb line) most were with 20 or 15... For trolling up dolphin I'd only use two rods (no outriggers, just straight flat lines) backed up with an assortment of lures (plugs, jigs, spoons) for casting or just bare hooks for tossing pre-cut chunks of bally or small live baits on rods rigged and ready. Only one rod (the 30lb) had a rigged ballyhoo, behind a medium bird. The second trolling rod had a very small bird with a hex head or other small (only 1oz) tolling jet or feather.

In use the trolling lines only hit the water when I had something to work around (something floating, a weedline, a current edge or eddy, or birds working... The lighter rod (with 20lb line) was set up to run almost 250 to 300 feet back, the bally rod was at normal long rigger distance. For a solo operation it was deadly.... If I could hook one fish it wasn't hard to take them all by myself if they were decent sized fish.

Of course some days all I got was a boat ride but "run and gun" fishing was a lot easier when gas prices were a lot lower....

Try trolling small lures like little feathers, hoochies and maybe the very smallest resin heads. You'll mainly catch dorado and skipjack offshore which will be lots of fun and not really too difficult on your light tackle. Two or three extra spin rods rigged to fish cut bait to mahi if you see them under floaters as Lemay advises wouldn't be a bad idea either.

I don't know where you are fishing, but I fished South Florida and the Keys for 35 years. The vast majority of the time when trolling I would use 2 20# conventional outfits (Penn Int'l 20's) and 2 20# spinners Shimano 6500 Baitrunners). I've caught many dolphin, kingfish, wahoo and sailfish on these outfits and never came close to being spooled. When a school of dolphin came in, I'd throw jigs, plugs or chunk bait on 10# spinners.

Of course, when fishing for dolphin, there's always the possibility of the man in the blue suit showing up, but that's the kind of trouble I liked, It only happened once and we released the fish. You are in a boat, chase the fish. If you are in a Keys sailfish tournament, the usual line test is 12#

thanks for the input i appreciate it, i dunno about hatteras in late august but are tuna still around? i imagine that some bluefin would murder light tackle reel apart, but if they are not around is there anything else really out there besides the blue marlin that will tear small tackle apart in late august?