Occasionally I'll hook a small chicken dolphin, fight it to the boat only to lose it to a bull dolphin that was waiting for the smaller fish to clear the weedline. Upon reaching the dock, I examined the stomach contents and was surprised to discover several large blue crabs in each fish. Given the mahi mahi's extreme metabolism, those fish would have digested the crabs in a matter of a few hours which is not nearly enough time for them to swim North to shallow water. Its obvious these fish were diving at least 220 feet to feed. The fact that the bull's hunt deep are one of the keys into catching them.
Most anglers troll the weedlines until spotting the first school of chicken dolphin.
Chicken dolphin never swim alone and are easy to entice with chum. You can use just about any cut bait but using Border Fish Oil is cheaper and is made of pure menhadden oil. Border Fish Oil is the easy to use and helps keep the cockpit much cleaner. Another trick to quickly bring in bull dolphin's is to fill a mesh bag with cut up pogies or fish carcasses. Tie off the chum bag to a cleat and send it down to 20 feet.