Taking advantage of the 17 1/2-foot beam on his 58-foot Irvin Forbes custom, Parks puts out several squid strips and a couple ballyhoo to troll the eastern edge of a weed line. "Our lines usually form along color changes," he says. "Dolphin track along the eastern edge because it has blue water that runs a few degrees warmer than the green side."

While trolling, Parks keeps his eyes peeled for activity such as packs of feeding yellowfin or dolphin breaking the surface. Charter crews in North Carolina sometimes call jumping dolphin "gravediggers" because they betray the school's location to anglers. "I've also seen dolphin shower like baitfish when fleeing from blue marlin," he says.

Parks stops the boat when a dolphin strikes so his anglers can start "bailing." As a hooked fish nears the boat, the crew chums its schoolmates with bits of "red" meat: bonito chunks or blood lines cut from tuna filets. A hooked dolphin comes aboard only after another fish swallows a bait. Leaving a tethered fish in the water — along with the chum — helps keep others interested and in range.

"If the dolphin bite well, we concentrate on catching our limit, then switch tackle and baits to go for marlin or tuna," Parks says. "But if it's slow, a dolphin here and there, we slip out a couple marlin baits while trolling the weed line."

Murphy's game plan includes chum only if he has fly-fishermen on board and wants to work dolphin into a boat-side frenzy. He prefers to use live bait after locating a school of dolphin. His standard procedure calls for slowly motoring away from the weed line after a hookup to prevent the fish from running into the weeds. "If the anglers are experienced and don't need my help in the cockpit, I climb the tower for a better view into the water," he says. "It's common to see a few teenagers — dolphin in the 15-pound range — with the hooked fish, and a bull hanging farther back. That's when I rig a big live bait and put it on the bull's nose."

Pinfish make excellent baits, but Murphy also takes the time to collect a few larger offerings such as herring or blue runners. "Small dolphin usually swarm a pinfish. If you throw out a bigger bait, the little guys leave it alone, while a bull rushes in to eat it," he says.

Check the Depths
Bailing and live-baiting dolphin make for visually oriented excitement, but savvy anglers don't forget about the invisible fish lurking far below a carpet of vegetation. Planers that deploy baits or lures beneath the trolling spread often nail wahoo. When Murphy locates dolphin on the troll, he stops to live-bait them and then proceeds to exhaust all possibilities before putting out more ballyhoo and moving on.

"As things slow down after we catch a few dolphin, I drop a heavy jig sweetened with a ballyhoo, then reel it up quickly," the skipper says. "Wahoo tend to hit this rig, so I use a short wire trace."

Don't be surprised if probing the depths below a weed line turns up dolphin as well as wahoo. Murphy tells of a recent charter trip in which he found a weed line on a hot, calm day. His anglers used live baits near the surface to catch a few teenager dolphin, then several smaller fish. As the action slowed, Murphy dropped a jig and hooked a 20-pound dolphin. "Three other fish of the same size followed it to the boat!" he says.