Several fish I can blame on my leader. I had a batch of Mason saltwater material that had been bad in Christmas Island the year before. I still had it and had to learn all over again that it was bad. Why I hadn't thrown it away I'll never know. I had, in the lighter tippet material, but now even the heavier 20-30# stuff was rotten. Scratch three dorado to breakoffs on the take. Forget two where the hook popped free on the first jump or thereabouts.
I even lost a roosterfish, that legendary jack of Baja and the tropical pacific. There was a sand beachline in front of Dick's future homesite that was reputed to be a spot for cruising roosterfish. We did see four pairs that would have gone 40# apiece. When the dorado fishing was slow or the water too rough several times we cruised along the shoreline and threw poppers onto the beach and popped them out through the shorebreak.
Once I had a charge just as I lifted the popper off for a backcast, the roostertail dorsal of the fish clearly visible above the water. The boat was running fairly fast and I yelled for it to be stopped, then laid the popper down again, although fully 20 feet away from where I had last seen the fish. No matter, it was all over the popper in a rush, feinting and slashing at it several times before just grabbing it in
frustration. I hooked up solid. The jack was about five pounds, which doesn't sound like much but according to Dick, a 5 lb. roosterfish will give you all you can handle on a fly rod. And I had never caught one, or even seen one up close before. Anyway, POP! Homer Rhodes' loop knot broke right at the knot. No explanation. The roosterfish jumped once more to show me he still had the popper and wasn't going to give it back. Jinx.
For seven days I fought bad weather, slow fishing, bad luck and bad timing, anything and everything that can conspire to keep one fishless. I was getting frustrated. I wanted a decent sized dorado on my Shakespeare reel.
The last day I was in Dick's boat. Dick, having done this for 15 years, had an interesting attitude about dorado fishing. Kind of a mexican attitude; they're either there or not, feeding or not, don't
fight it. He also had a marlin rod, a tapered six foot thing with a monstrous reel. Because there were marlin around, lots of them. There may have been even more marlin around than dorado. The hotel
was doing land office business, staying open for July and August for the first time ever. They were selling rooms and meals and a chartered boat and guide for $78/day. They were putting out 35
boats a day, and almost every one of them was bringing back a marlin a day, with three or four other hookups or releases. And these were BIG marlin, with a high percentage of blues.
