It’s late September and we are waking up before sunset to go for a fishing trip outside Chania, on the island of Crete, Greece. The previous day we had seen an advertisement on the beach for a 2 hour deep-sea fishing trip. The price was €150 and we could be up to 3 people. That is really cheap considering most of these kind of fishing trips usually cost €400-600.
Our expectations was not so high and we had no idea what kind of fish we could catch.
Going fishing
After a 30 minutes drive from Chania we arrived at Marathi. We met up with the Captain and his sister. They were both very nice and provided us with some drinks and snacks during the trip. On the way out to the fishing area we first made a stop to pick up another crew-member. It turned out to be the brother of the captain and he just came back from fishing some octopus before sunset that we were going to use a bait for our fishing.
Traveling at full-speed for about 10-15 minutes and we had arrived at our fishing spot, a few 100 meters off the coast, with Akrotiri peninsula, standing tall in the distance.
We let our bait on to the hooks and it didn’t take many minutes before we had hooked our first fish. A quite powerful fish that pulled some line. Chris spent some good minutes reeling it in while the fish was pulling. Getting closer to the boat we started to see a shimmering green-yellow fish that I didn’t expect to see in these waters. It was a Dolphin fish, also known as Mahi-Mahi or Dorado. I had only seen this fish on the restaurant menu in the US and to catch one here in Greece was a pleasant surprise.
During the next hour we had some amazing fishing and we caught 6 or 7 of Dolphin fish. Everyone was happy and it was one of the best fishing experiences we have had. Big thanks to the crew. I would highly recommend this fishing trip if you are ever in Crete. For the price it is unbeatable.
The high season for Dolphin Fish is between May to August but it is available all year around. See table below.
Dolphin fish or Mahi-mahi
The mahi-mahi or common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical, and subtropical waters worldwide. These fish are most commonly found in the waters around the Gulf of Mexico, Costa Rica, Hawaii and the Indian Ocean. Read more about Mahi-mahi on Wikipedia.
See our YouTube video on the link here:
If you want to read more about Crete, check out our Top 5 Beaches in Crete post.
