dorado on its head and you will get about the response from it as you would from clubbing me on my biceps. It's prominent brow is all muscle. When you fillet a dorado you discover that the fish is basically a single muscle driven fin carrying eyes, a mouth, and a little stomach. Subduing one takes a little time, no matter what. I gaffed one large fish and, holding it's shimmering body out of the water, wondered what part of the boat I wanted to trash by setting it down there. Finally I spied the fish box and unceremoniously dumped it in. The fish levitated 5 feet in the air up to Frank's surprised eyebrows and fell straight down into the box again. Frank slammed the lid closed and all was silent. After about ten seconds he peeked inside and the fish came thundering out again up to his head height and again fell straight back into the box. We left it closed after that for several minutes. On one occasion I was casting in the bow hoping for a double as they were trying to gaff a fish. The fish jumped cleanly over the side of the boat into the bow with me, solving the gaffing problems but creating a whole new set for me. The first morning we launched to two boats over a sandy beach and headed out to the southeast where there was reported to be a concentration of shark fishermen's buoys. We ran at high speed through some swells while everyone scanned the water to spot the styrofoam buoys. Spotting one we ran up to within 75 yards beforemotoring down, then the driver would circle the buoys at either high, medium or slow speed depending on his mood of perverseness while the casters braced themselves and cast and stripped as fast and hard as they could without bouncing overboard. Nothing happened in the first minute or two so we raced away to find another buoy. At the second set of buoys on the second pass Frank yelled, "there's one!". I looked back and saw a swirl, then this neon blue bullet chase and eat his fly as plain as day despite being 50 feet away. Frank grunted back and braced himself as the fish raced off jumping wildly. After several minutes the fish was brought closer to the boat where it circled and sounded several times. "Doesn't look yellow yet, still blue", Dave observed. The legendary luminescent color of the dorado changes with it's mood and physical state. The burnished gold "dorado" color is only a transient state during exhaustion at the end of the fight. Before that the body is neon sky blue with a glowing yellow lemon yellow forked tail and deep blue neon pectoral fins. Don't gaff any dorado that doesn't look yellow. The fish was gaffed and lifted from the water and already its color was fading. So that was a dorado. That first day we actually had the best fishing of the trip. We found buoys with schools of small fish, enough so that we had several triple hookups, the excited and foraging fish chasing our streamers and poppers in aggressive swipes.
									More Text =>
			<= Back
		Table of Contents				Fishtales Start		Order/Contact