My good friend, Captain Wayne Beardsley, with a 35 pound Mahi Mahi caught 50 miles West of Puerto Rico off the stern of his 49 Grand Banks Classic Long Legged Lady. He caught it using a classic form artificial squid streamer on a Ugly Stick 8 fly rod and Van Staal C-Vex reel with weight forward #8 line tipped with 20 lb fluorocarbon leader.
The Mahi Mahi, also known as Dolphin or Dolphinfish, is one of the prized sport fish which also happens to be an excellent fish for dinner. Commonly found in temperate, tropical and sub-tropical waters, mahi are voracious eaters and will swallow almost anything from crustaceans to larger bait fish. Fishing for mahi is somewhat rare up here in New England, but in late summer when the waters are warmer and/or the Gulf Stream wanders in closer to the coast, mahi can be hiding and/or hanging around weedlines, floating objects like trees, loose buoys and/or anchored navigation buoys.
Down south, looking for bird activity around floating structure will usually indicate the presence of mahi in open ocean, you can bet on it. In shore, it will be hit or miss watch water temps for warmer than normal levels and inspect the floating structure for weeds and incrustation.
Rigging for Mahi on either spinning gear or fly is fairly straight forward. 7/8 Medium to Medium Heavy rods with quick (fast) taper, sufficiently heavy large capacity reels like the Penn 460 large spool series or the above mentioned Van Staal and 30/50 lb mono with fluorocarbon leaders for spin and #8/9 forward weight fly line will survive a good fight. Bait throwers will do well with large spinner baits and fly throwers will always find that Clouser imitations, white or fluorescent, the larger the better, will always work if you can find the fish. They are an incredible aerobatic show and their colors will dazzle you (but fade rapidly at death).
Cautionary note on Mahi. They are considered a moderate mercury fish so limiting your intake to once or twice a month is a good idea. They can be a carrier for ciguatera poisoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera) which has some flat out nasty neurological and physiological effects. Open water fish are generally ok, but those caught in/around reefs should be considered suspect.
