And Dorado do some neat things too. Stay tuned for part 5
PART 5 If you ever plan a saltwater trip, make sure you pay attention to the lunar cycle and don't go during a full moon. They feed all night on a full moon and are not interested in much during the day. Other than that, water temperature is a key factor for certain species to be active or even there at all. Next, storms play a role, depending on the intensity, in changing the feeding behaviors. And then man, either intentionally, or unintensionally, plays a role, either with his treatment of the enviornment or with the harvesting pressure he brings to bear on this enviornment. We had near perfect planning. No full moon. Weather and water temp. perfect. No storms. The one uncontrollable factor was that a month or so earlier, illegal trawling was performed by night by unmarked fleets, presumed to be Japanese. These are ransacking the food chain and upsetting the balances for the local commercial fishermen. They are working on the problem. So, other than this, dorado fishing was as perfect as one could want. Enough challenge for the skills, but plenty fish to catch, and in our case release- at least most of them. A few went home with the guides for families and we took 2 back to the motel for dinner. Other groups were cooler-haulers, bent on one thing- filling coolers with filets. The dorado themselves, as a group, seemed to change from day to day. One day they would be as stubborn as mules, with 20 pounders beating us up on our 12wts. The next day they were much easier to whip and land, and again, this was as a whole. So we figured some nighttime feeding was probably the cause. I figured this must be the case when one of my fish spewed up a cloud of 'mud', followed by the foot-long mantle of a squid. Also, they seemed to be more finiky on these days, maybe because they were full. On day two, while they were not as mulish, I decided to fish my 8wt boron. It was such a blast, I kept it ready at all times for quick casting at fast-feeding fish. At first I only cast at smaller ones. But after landing these in respectable time, I cast at larger fish. If they didn't break the 6lb class tippet on a savage take or on the initial run, I pretty much landed them all, even a 30 pound female, on 6lb class tippet. I did lose a few, though, and mostly at the class tippet knots. They just happened to be the weakest links in the leader. And all those occured on one day. I changed tippets completely and never lost another to a break. The dorado's speed has always impressed me. Sometimes you spot one 20' down coming up for your fly. They are just a streak as they cover the distance. Although you can jerk a fly literally out of the mouth of a striking fish, usually they have you before your brain can even regester it. They seem to enjoy some 'sport' in feeding, also. They sometimes take a fly from weird angles or swoop around it. One of the most amazing feats is the dive-bomb technique. I have had them dive-bomb cast flies, especially with longer casts away from the boat. They streak up from the side and below, exit the water in a shallow arc four or 5 feet from the fly, and then come right down on the fly, resulting in a savage take and immediate hook-up and sizziling run. There's no way to put into words the feeling of witnessing this. But the most spectacular dive-bombs occurred while trolling. We're talking a fast troll here- 10-15 miles per hour, because we're looking for big bulls and trying to raise sailfish, too. We had dorado come in from behind and in from the sides, make one, sometimes two, extremely fast low jumps, headed at the flies. The last jump landed them precisely on the moving fly. One memorable dorado came in from the side, made two 15' low fast, awesome leaps at full speed, and came down directly on the fly, hooking itself from the impact. He was hooked on the trailer, a 6/0 Owner, so he caught the fly dead square in the middle. The timing he exibited to do that was amazing, as he had to leap for where the fly would be when he got there, like a football thrown to a receiver at full speed. Without being able to adjust in mid-flight, his timing and speed were perfect. Now for the last fish of the trip. Part 6 DonO
