This month’s favored fish is quite the acrobat, and, when hooked, spends almost as much time out of the water as in the water with incredible jumps as high as six feet in the air. It’s a very odd looking fish with a blunt head and long body the colors of turquoise, bright green, yellow and blue, thus making it one of the most beautiful fish in the sea.
This fish has many names depending on where you are from. In Hawaii, it’s known as the mahi-mahi, which, in the native language, means very strong; in Florida it is known as dolphin, and on the west coast and central and South America it’s name is Dorado, which in Spanish means golden.
The sad thing about this dynamic fish is that it only lives to be five years old. Therefore, this guy eats all it can! The main source of food is everything from crabs to bait fish. They are crazy about eating (that’s, basically, all they do); fishermen, when cleaning them, have found things in their stomachs like rope, plastic wrapper, and even light bulbs. They can grow up to 10 lbs. a year, making them one the fastest growing fish in the sea, and they are also one the fastest swimmers at 57.5 mph, so maybe it is a good idea that they only live to be five years old because if they lived 30 or 40 years they might be eating us!
Here’s how to fish for them: One of the most common ways is to troll with skirted lures (I to troll from 7 to 9 knots), always looking for feeding fish on top of the water, watching for bird activity, and trolling to them, or looking for floating trash circling the floating objects with your lures. Once you have found them and hooked one, bring it to the boat slowly, looking for fish to follow. Because of their colors you can usually see them, then put on a live or dead bait and throw to the other fish; even a fly for you fly fishermen will work. If you find a school feeding and you have chum you can fish almost all day, just keep on chumming and throw what ever you want and you will catch fish.
The Adventure
Charles and I headed out to San Jose Del Cabo. I wanted to catch a hammer head shark for the show so we called our good friend and one the best guides in Cabo, Eduardo Guluarte. We call Eduardo the Black Bear because of his looks—he’s short, stout, dark, very strong and ugly, so he’s the black bear, but he’s the best guide. I caught my grander with him. Charles and I went out, but this time we took two supper pangas (a supper panga is a big panga fish). We took two-film crew with divers so we needed the two pangas. First we fished for bait bonito and, after catching what we needed, headed out to find the sharks.
When we got there we put down the dead bonito. Charles and the other crew decided to troll and went out a little further. Well that’s when all hell broke loose. I hooked up and the fight was on—it wasn’t a monster but a nice hammer head, so down went the diver and we started filming when all of sudden the radio began to scream. It was the other boat saying get your butts over here Charles has Dorado—possibly the new world record. We cut the shark loose and fired up the boat and headed out. The closer we got we could see this giant fish jumping like 10 feet into the air. It was a monster. My little boy wasn’t such a little boy any more. He fought it for one hour and 30 minutes. Its weight was 76 lbs., making it the new word junior record. I was so proud!
If you want to watch our show online go www.asobonline.com, or if you need info on fishing Mexico, please contact thegriz@asobonline.com. We would love to hear from you.
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