[Etownpaul]

We were about 300 yards off shore when we caught the mackerel and snapper. We first tried using live sardines and hand casting our baited hooks into the boil of mackerel,but we were having little success ( this worked great for us last year). Our captain decided we should change it up and we trolled slowly near the mackerel boil with 3” mid diving rapalas and we started catching them steady. The captain was chumming the water the whole time, throwing sardines in the path of our lures. Mackerel have really hard mouths and I think the treble hooks on the rapalas was the reason we had better hook ups. You don’t have much time on a single point hook to set it before they are gone.

The snapper hit on a rapala as well, which was kind of random because I’ve only caught them bottom fishing before.

We trolled at a faster speed for the Mahi Mahi , probably about a mile from shore. We followed a commercial long line parallel to the shoreline, hoping to catch some stragglers that were attracted by their bait. We followed it for 3 miles or so and had 2 hits, but unless you set the hook at the right time, they are gone. Mahi mahi only seemed to hit the rods we had in the rod holders (we trolled 4 lines total), so it was tough to hook em.

Our trip cost us $300US for 4 hours and was totally worth it. Out of that you lose about an hour between travel time to the fishing spots and time to gather bait fish, so 3 hours actually fishing. You pay for the boat, so you could split it up to 6 ways if you really wanted to. I’d rather pay more and have it just the wife and I (with the captain and deckhand). My wife only likes fishing in Mexico now because it’s too slow a pace for her here lol.