Slow dolphin season

CaptJ

Back in the early 70's there were so many Dolphin during the spring to early summer that we would leave schools to look for a better class size. 20+ lb fish were pretty common and we caught quite a few over 50. Keeping these peanuts just destroys the population. When everybody catches all they can and boats come back with 40 or 50 small fish it's not a wonder why the size of the fish and the catch has gone down. It's not rocket science.

baccarac

Although I agree in general with many parts of many of these post. I think it’s pretty obvious that of all of the game fish that we target offshore dolphin are the one that travel the most. Or have the ability to travel long distances in a very short period of time. I think it’s pretty much a no brainer if any of us have gone to any other countries which I have you can see the depletion of game fish around all of the Caribbean countries due to overfishing. The international commercial fishing community could give a rats **** about our dolphin population here. Since we are really the northern boundary of the fishes migration pattern we have to put up with the harvesting across the Caribbean and beyond. Trying to regulate this internationally....good luck on that. Anyways why don’t we just blame it on Covid😩

Terry Ravenscraft

Hope they get it figured out across the board ...when they close a season to everyone except commercial there is an issue with politics and who is in who’s pocket...flounder on the docket

iceblue

I have been fishing off Boca since the early 70s. The main thing that I am convinced ruined the fishing from Jupiter south is “beach renourishment”, aka pumping non-natural sand onto our beach and shallow reefs. We no longer have any bait down here (pilchards, dines, greenies). All our reefs in 30 feet or less have been covered with sand.  Used to be huge black schools of bait all up and down the coast. Now the bait doesn’t go south of St Lucie. You guys are probably thinking that dolphin are too far out to be affected by this. But the dolphin void is in the exact same zone - Miami to St Lucie - which is where all the mud pumping takes place and where there is no longer bait. 

conchydong

The bottom line with everything is too many people. More folks = more fishermen. More folks= more development.
Maybe the Covid 19 plague was natures way of trying to thin the herd. I don't know but it is a possibility.

FishOn1

Agree with Ice Blue. In the 70-80's, beach dives off of DFB and Pompano were very productive for fish and bugs. Lots of live reef. 
Even up until the last few years, bait was seasonal but very dependable in the inlet, Lake Boca and beaches north and south...now, next to non existent most of the time. The first reef is basically a sand pile over very sparse scattered rock, little life.

Gotsea

I have been fishing for the las 60 years, in different parts of the planet, back in early 80's I use to travel over 85% of the time (due to work) I always make it a point to either go fishing or at least go and talk to the local anglers, once I was at Recife Brazil, and I went to the pier were the locals were fishing and asked about the catch to and old salty seating on a box, he Said "look at the sky and tell me what you see" there was nothing that caught my eye, he said "do you see any birds?" "no food no birds, there is nothing in this waters" 
Pollution and overfishing, back then there were still a lot of fish to be caught here, not any more