Be fishing at first light

Matt Willis of Charleston said launching his boat and getting underway at 3:30 a.m. is not necessarily his favorite thing to do, but it’s often necessary to put dolphin in the boat.

“To get to the offshore dolphin areas, we’ll be underway at least two and sometimes three hours before daylight,” he said. “We’ve noted a pattern of a really good bite first thing in the morning. It seems like the dolphin are feeding near the surface more consistently then than at any other time of the day.”

Biologist Don Hammond said there is a very definitive scientific pattern to this early morning bite.

“We’ve been able to thoroughly document a pattern of dolphinfish coming to the surface from deep water at first light off the coast of the Carolina’s,” he said. “Our studies show that at night, dolphin will often repeatedly dive deep, often from 100 to 300 feet deep. There’s only one reason they go down there, and that’s to eat. The really deep-dwelling food sources such as squid and rock shrimp — among various other forage fish that dolphin eat — will move up from really deep water to this level primarily on dark of the night moons.

“However, regardless of moon phase, the dolphinfish pop to the surface right at first light every day,” Hammond said, “not at sunrise, but at first light. Every one of the tagged fish does this every day, and we’ve got years of data from tagged fish to demonstrate that. That’s likely why dolphin fishermen often have great success at this time.”

Hammond added that the nocturnal deep-diving is a regional situation. In the Caribbean and even off the coast of Florida, deep diving by dolphin is not a normal activity.

“In many areas, they find plenty of food day and night near the surface,” Hammond said. “But off the coast of South Carolina, deep diving and an immediate return to the surface at first light to feed is a fact.”

“Not all the dolphin will stay shallow all day,” Hammond said. “Studies show that about 15 percent of the time during the day off the Carolina coast, dolphinfish will be at depths of 100 to 200 feet. That explains why sometimes a great-looking mat of sargassum weed, normally a prime place to load up on fish, will not have any dolphin around it.”