About Dorado
Dorado — also called mahi-mahi or dolphinfish — are the most colorful fish in SoCal water, period. Electric blue on top, neon green flanks, gold belly. A bull dorado at the end of your line, skying out of the water six feet in the air, is a sight you don't forget.
They're warm-water visitors. In a strong El Niño summer, paddy fishing can get lights-out — 10 to 15 fish per stop on live sardines, schoolies in the 10–15 lb range, bulls pushing 40+. In a cold summer, they might not show at all.
How to Catch
Dorado live under floating structure. A single kelp paddy 30 miles offshore can hold 50 fish. The game is: find the paddy, approach quietly, throw live bait.
Fly-line a live sardine at the kelp edge with no weight. The bite is usually fast and visual — you'll see the fish flash, then the bait disappears. Set the hook and hold on. Dorado jump immediately and repeatedly.
If they're in a feeding frenzy, you can cast poppers at boils. Any bright topwater works — they're not picky when they're on. Just reel fast; they hit moving lures.
Keep one fish on the line when you hook up. Dorado are schooling fish and the rest of the school will follow a hooked buddy right up to the boat — deckhands call this "keeping a dog on" and it lets the whole boat hook up.
Eating Profile
Lean, white, mild. Grills great with olive oil and lime. Not fatty like tuna, so it cooks fast and gets chalky if overdone — pull it early and let carryover finish it. Fish tacos with dorado, pickled onion, and cilantro crema are hard to beat. Keep it iced hard — dorado go off fast in warm weather.
Common Mistakes
- Crashing the paddy. Running up in gear and stopping hard scatters the fish. Approach slow, kill the motor 50 yards out, and drift in.
- Skipping the chum. Even one handful of chopped sardine brings them up. Deckhands who chum catch more fish than deckhands who don't.
- Wire leader. Dorado don't need it — they don't cut line like king mackerel. 30 lb fluoro is plenty, and wire scares them off.
- Leaving too quick. The first fish off a paddy is rarely the last. If one comes up, keep fishing it — even if nobody's hooked up, the school is there.
Month-by-Month
- Jan–Jun: No dorado. Water's too cold. Don't bother.
- Jul: Early arrivals in warm years. Scout trips start finding paddy fish late in the month.
- Aug–Sep: Peak. If the water's 72°F+, this is the window. Schoolie dorado stacked on paddies, bulls mixed in.
- Oct: Still catchable through mid-month, then fish drift south as water cools.
- Nov–Dec: Gone. They push back down into Baja water.
