Mike Dumas

Capt. Mike Dumas, known as Mutton Mike, is one of South Florida's best deep water and bottom fishermen. He specializes in deep dropping, swordfishing, bottom fishing, and wahoo trolling across South Florida, the Florida Keys, Pulley Ridge, the Dry Tortugas, and the Bahamas, and he is a patient, generous teacher. In his In The Spread video, Dumas breaks down bottom fishing for golden tilefish in South Florida, from finding the right deep bottom and rigging for fish in the mud to managing the drift and positioning the boat.

• Boat Positioning Videos
• Bottom Fishing Videos
• Saltwater
• Tilefish Fishing Videos

Instructor's videos

They do not call him Mutton Mike for nothing. Capt. Mike Dumas is one of the best deep water and bottom fishermen in South Florida, a specialist in the kind of fishing that happens hundreds of feet down where most anglers never learn to catch. Whether he is dropping baits to golden tilefish, working a swordfish in the dark of the deep, or picking apart a wreck for mutton snapper, Dumas puts fish in the box on the toughest, most technical grounds Florida has to offer.

His water is not just the reef out front. Dumas ranges across all of South Florida and runs to the far corners of it: the Florida Keys, the deep bottom of Pulley Ridge, the Dry Tortugas, and the Bahamas. That reach, and the depth of species he targets, is what makes him such a valuable teacher. He is as comfortable deep dropping for tilefish and swordfish as he is bottom fishing for snapper or trolling for wahoo.

Deep dropping is a discipline all its own. Fishing in six hundred to a thousand feet of water means understanding bottom composition, reading how current pushes your rig off the target, managing an enormous amount of line, and knowing exactly how a golden tilefish relates to the soft mud and clay where it burrows. Dumas has all of that dialed, along with the boat positioning it takes to stay on a small piece of productive bottom in deep water.

What his clients mention first, though, is that he loves to teach. Dumas is patient, down to earth, and genuinely happy to share what he knows, the kind of captain you leave a better fisherman than you were when you got on the boat.

In his In The Spread video, Dumas breaks down bottom fishing for golden tilefish in South Florida: locating the right deep bottom, rigging and dropping to fish that live in the mud, managing the drift, and positioning the boat to stay in the zone. If you want to learn deep dropping from someone who lives in the deep, Dumas is your man.

Personal Website: https://muttonmike.com/