Cruising For Golden Dorado

Does slowly cruising down a river and catching plenty of fish along the way sound like it’s got the makings of the perfect fly fishing trip? JONATHAN BOULTON says it does.

The doting grandmother at Christmas proudly surveys the dining-room table with all her grandchildren. While she loves them all, and really can’t possibly admit she has a favourite, we all know, deep down, there is always a favourite. I love each and every fish from all the corners of the world, their characteristics, their looks, their individual nuances... but then there is golden dorado. One should never have a favourite, but we are talking golden dorado here, just saying. Hold a golden dorado in the soft light of the setting sun and admire the scale configuration, the striking fin markings, that colour only Mother Nature’s palette can produce and let’s start talking favourites! Then there is the way they behave. Their brash aggression, their fearless smash-it-first-ask-questions-later attitude.

And the fight. We have all caught fish that jump spectacularly, but some dorado I have hooked have spent more time airborne than underwater during the fight. I also love the sheer diversity in the way they hunt, from strength in numbers, their pack mentality, literally driving baitfish to throw themselves onto the mud banks to avoid the unfolding carnage, and then to solitary fish cleverly stationed at strategic spots like tributary mouths, converging currents, a colour line or an underwater drop-off. Their favourite is on the front end of a piece of structure in the current: a log, a boulder or a sapling growing out of the water. This is when one has to throw caution to the wind and cast across and perilously close to the structure, the current will swing the fly and you will have to time the retrieve so that the fly passes just over the face of the structure. Not close enough and the presentation will not elicit a strike. Get it wrong and the fly swings and snags on the structure. Tricky stuff indeed.