Summer is dorado season (mostly)

Dorado, or mahi-mahi if you're being formal, are the crowd-pleasers: fast, acrobatic, beautiful, and excellent eating. Timing matters more than with most fish here.

They're best in winter and again in autumn, with a lull through the late spring. So the "summer is dorado season" you hear at the dock is half right — early summer fishes, late spring sags, and then autumn brings the second and arguably better run.

They're an outer-bay and offshore fish, which puts them on the six-to-eight-hour trip — the Marietas, the outer bay, the blue water. On a mixed-ability trip with kids or first-timers, dorado are the perfect target: constant action, jumps you can see coming, and dinner at the end.

Check where they sit right now on the fishing calendar, and if the timing's right, come get them.