Day 9, a day off and a recipe for a Dorado hoochie.

[JerryInLodi]

I haven't fished conventional for years with the exception of the rods I use down here for trolling hoochies. I use two Ugly Sticks one Medium and one Medium Light weight with Penn 49 trolling reels. I don't know if they're made any more. I have thirty pound test on one and twenty on the other. (Right now one of the Penns is being serviced and has been temporarily replaced with an Okuma Convector CV 30L) The only thing I troll is hoochies. Live bait is a pain in that it has to be trolled much more slowly and one has to worry about line spin, etc. As I said, right now I'm experimenting to see if I can use the hoochies without hooks a la sailfish style with a right to left cast once a hoochie is struck. Kill the engine, cast the fly, let the hoochies sink.

As far as other fishing, yes, I fish the rocks all the time and in fact enjoy it as much or more than the Dorado. Much more suspense in what's on the other end of the line and more skill and technique needed in fish fighting. I use from eight weights upward although why I bother with the eight weight is beyond me except that it casts soooo well. I can fish successfully down to about 25 feet using an extra long count.

I also enjoy casting to yellow fin but none are here yet. I'm not a fan of bonito, skipjack or ladyfish and will pass them up.

Triggers are fun and can be caught one after another and really give a person a work out. They could easily break my nine weight if I'm not careful. The only thing with triggers is once you're into them you rarely catch anything else, just one big trigger after another, like giant five pound bluegill.

Oh, I take that back about not fishing conventional in years. Six years ago I brought down a lightweight spinning outfit. I wanted to prove a Dorado could be caught on almost anything. We had bought some watermelon and I shaped a piece of the rind into a plug sort of configuration, perfect coloring, green, and then white going to pink. I wove a hook into it and cast it and skipped it across the water over some Dorado. Bam, bam, bam, hookup! I was going to continue the quest using banana skins, apple slices etc but got distracted by other stuff. If I had brought it with me this year I'd continue the "fruit fly" fishing and include patterns in one of my posts. (Witnesses available)

[Darian]

Did I hear that correctly You take BANANA's on board your boat I was under the impression that banana's were bad luck on board a boat.... Info from an ancient mariner but confirmed by others

[JerryInLodi]

Bananas haves good effects. Supposedly eating bananas keeps mosquitoes away. (Something I learned while living in the South Pacific, although my preferred treatment for mosquitoes was a double gin and tonic. It must have worked, my wife and I were the only ex-pats who did not catch maleria.)

Bananas contain high amounts of either potassium or phosphorus, can't remember which, which helps with muscle tremors while fighting big fish.

I like bananas.