The Dolphin and the Squid

Catching dorado and a few surprises in southern Baja

It was the morning of the fourth day of a week-long trip, and ordinarily the edge would have worn off by now. But as our guide, Reynaldo Quintana, eased the panga to a stop some two miles off shore and maybe a dozen miles up the coast from Loreto, on the Sea of Cortez in the southern half of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, Rick Pope and I were madly stripping line off our reels and getting ready to cast. A couple of the nearby boats were already into dorado--Coryphaena hippurus, also know as mahi-mahi or dolphinfish--and after Reynaldo had flipped a couple of sardinas overboard, it became apparent that we were surrounded by fish. Read more – offline – from the current issue; subscribe to FRR.