Each day seemed to change the fish about as much as they varied themselves in genetic diversity. More on that in part 4.
PART 4 As we have all experienced in trout fishing or bassing, or even panfishing, a lure can be hot for an hour, a morning, a day, or a week, but fish turn off and on to lures for apparently no reason. This is true with dorado, too. In the past we finally figured out- 'catch a fish- change the fly'- was the rule. This trip was somewhat the same, but with a few twists. That's what makes it challenging. At times they can actually be too finiky to take ANY fly. On the first morning I caught my 1st 3 dorado on one cast each of the squid fly. I then cut it off just to try something different. The next morning I couldn't get Dorado that were in a feeding frenzy to take the squid. I put on the shrimp pattern, which was cold the first day, and caught fish after fish. I then put on awesum hair flies and they were consumed savagely. But the next day both the shrimp and the awesum hair were ignored. On the 4th day, awesum hair was king, same on the 5th. On the 6th day, I couldn't buy a fish with anything, even trolling Awesum hair flies flies to locate pods. All that was working that last day was my 'Don's Green Machine', and it was clobbering me, since Jim was the one fishing fishing it. He was up 6 to 0, so in order not to get skunked I put on a green machine too and caught the biggest bull of the trip for me. It was past 12:00 noon, way past the end of the feed, but the GM was still bringing them in. The one I caught came in visibly, snaking thru the water like a green dragon from over 50 yards away, bumping Jim's fly, then hammering mine. His airborne antics would done any sailfish justice. He weighed about 40lbs and took an hour to land on the 14wt! You say "Trolling"?? You bet! When the schools go away, especially later in the day as the feeding slows or ceases, a great way to find a new pod is to troll giant marlin flies. The big bulls just hammer them. Once he's hooked and brawling, he starts regurgitating all the sardines and squid and stuff he's been eating. This brings in more dorado, looking for a free easy meal. Once close to the boat, the other fisherman now has a chance to cold-cast to these fish, and we had many hook-ups this way, on the 'amigos'. Sometimes 2 or 3 sucessive hook-ups could be acheived this way. And many times we didn't even have to sacrifice poor little sardines to them to get them to bite. As I have mentioned in the past, to me fishing is fun, catching is great. Getting skunked is no fun. Getting ribbed for trolling and catching is better than getting ribbed for being skunked. "The only thing worse than trolling flies is getting skunked" is the standard expression. We caught many dorado on a pure sight cast to a non-baited specific fish, so yes we flyfished. But we also caught chum-teased fish and we trolled for fish. No shame in that! As far as the genetic diversity in dorado that I spoke about, this is what I've seen. The gene pool of dorado is very loose, but does fit a pattern. Color and shape vary widely- except with the larger bulls. These seem to be almost clones of each other, both in shape and coloration. Only size differs. But I caught a long, skinny dorado that was completely banana-yellow, almost without green, and others that were bulky and had the coloration of pure hammered gold, on which sunlight would reflect and blind you. Others were speckled all over with irredescent blue spots, fins, and sometimes even blue lips. Most colors were lit up neon- green, yellow, blue, white. But the banana one was as dull as a banana. As I mentioned before, the pectoral fins lit up irredescent blue and were the first things visible at depths. The diversity was amazing, and I kept looking forward to catching the golden ones (hence their name 'dorado'- 'gold'). And Dorado do some neat things too. Stay tuned for part 5 DonO
