CABO ON THE FLY : WHEN THE DORADO COME OUT TO PLAY, THE MOST INTRIGUING CHALLENGE IS TO DISPENSE WITH BAITFISH.

Byline: Brett Pauly

They were rainbows with fins, darting just beneath the ocean surface off Baja California.

Frenzied dorados, sporting their telltale gold, green and metallic blue, reflected the sun's rays in neonlike hues around the boat that bobbed in the shifting currents where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez.

The uninitiated hear tales of the exotic game fish until, like the children's game of ``telephone,'' the stories become so distorted it's difficult to tell fact from fiction. The fish don't stop jumping until they fade into the sunset. They fight with more tenacity than marlins and keep anglers glued to their rods for days. Their brilliant colors are as fabled as the unicorn's horn.

And on that special fishing journey when you are finally initiated by a feeding school and hook into a sleek specimen that strikes hard and peels out line in a surprising rush, the clarity hits you like a hammer - ``Oh, I get it. This is what they mean.''

No, the dorado isn't enchanted. But witness this most colorful of all game fish break toward your line and you quickly understand why it's so highly prized.

The baitfish anglers here were scoring hookups with ease, and formidable fish were leaping high behind a handful of vessels trying to shake their pursuers. Our mission, however, was to coax these beauties with artificial flies created to look like herrings and anchovies, no small chore.

It was what I had anticipated all my fly-fishing career, and the waters 25 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas above an area of structure known as the Golden Gate proved to be a bountiful training ground.

Operators of Baja Anglers, one of the few sportfishing outfits in Cabo that cater specifically to the fly-angler, had anticipated that November would be getting late in the dorado season and that the winds would be picking up, making it difficult for a rookie ocean fly-fisherman such as myself to cast proficiently. However, tuna would be picking up, and marlin and roosterfish seasons would just be getting in swing.

Regardless of the species, ``It's all in the casting. If you can't cast on the fish, forget it,'' said Grant Hartman, on-site manager for Baja Anglers.

I was confident with my freshwater casting ability, but ocean fly-fishing was a wholly different beast, requiring much heavier rods, reels and lines and the complicated double-haul cast, in which the line is accelerated at the end of the back cast by jerking down on the fly line as the cast comes forward, enabling the fly to be tossed much farther, especially in stiff breezes.

Leave it to me to begin practicing the first day of the Mexican journey. The words of Chatsworth fly-angler Bennett Mintz, who suggested I make the trip, reverberated through my head as I fumbled in the surf with a 14-weight rod: ``You don't want to blow off a huge marlin because of an inability to cast a 12-weight rod with a fly as big as an owl the required 40 feet.''

During the three days of fly-fishing, my angling partner, Joe Contaldi, a fly-fishing instructor with Sport Chalet in West Hills, and I cast upon yellowfin tuna, roosterfish, jack crevalle, needlefish, cabrilla and pargo without any strikes. He landed a couple of Sierra mackerel (delicious in seviche). Our guides even turned the heads of a few striped marlin by teasing them with jigs and bait. One billfish was tantalizingly close, so close that Contaldi could see its stripes ``light up'' as it chased the teasers, but not close enough for our fly lines.

``We could have had three marlin, easily, if we had used conventional tackle, but we chose not to,'' he said. ``It shows how frustrating fly-fishing can be and how exciting it can be.''

But it was the dorado that came out to play at the Golden Gate.

We were armed with 11- to 14-weight fly rods and huge, kaleidoscopic fly patterns resembling herrings, sardines and anchovies. Live sardinas, a local herring, were used to bring the dorado - also known as dolphinfish and mahi mahi - up to the surface. Then a guide would throw out a caballito, or bigeye scad, that was tied to a fishing line, but not hooked, to tease in the game fish.

Then it's one or two quick false-casts, a 30- to 60-foot cast as close to the caballito as possible and immediately stripping in line as fast as you can to steer the dorado away from the bait and onto the fly. Miss, and you rollcast and start the whole process over . . . again and again. It's tiring, relentless and certainly more of a challenge than what our neighbors, the baitfish anglers, were receiving. Heck, their bait had hooks in them and couldn't miss on these hungry fish. I was getting extremely anxious.

But my patience finally paid off as that first dorado banged my anchovy pattern and sped off with the fly embedded in its maw. I wasn't timing it, but the fight must have easily exceeded 10 minutes. Nothing like that had ever graced the end of my fly line. And when the fish was aboard, my jaw dropped at the sight of its dazzling streaks, the dorsal fin that runs nearly the length of its body and the bulbous crest of its forehead so foreign-looking I've often thought it could have been the inspiration for the creature in the ``Alien'' movie series.

I caught seven on the trip and landed four. Contaldi hooked more than a dozen, and Hartman boated several, as well. All were estimated at 20 to 25 pounds and more than 40 inches. (They can grow to more than 80 inches.) We kept five and released the rest.

Considered a delicacy, they are table fare at some of the fanciest restaurants. But nothing compares to home-barbecued dorado that has been marinated in Italian dressing and washed down with Pacifico beer as the sun sets in Baja.

I was pleased with the outing, but I could have caught a mess more, according to Hartman, who served as my personal instructor. Some instructors make it seem like you're working for them. They lack subtlety. That drill-sergeant mentality gets frustrating, but it is often the best way to learn. Hartman is one of those instructors.

``I saw you lose 10 fish because your rod was too high for you to strike correctly,'' he said. ``Your reactions are so slow; you'll have to fuel up on some ginseng before you come down next time.''

He'd tell me to ready for a cast, and I simply couldn't get it out fast enough. ``Hey, you're wasting time,'' he barked. ``You don't know how long these fish will feed. Get more line out, but don't get those loops in there. Relax, calm down. Make a casting motion like you're punching your mother-in-law. No, too much wrist. Get it out there further.''

Invariably I would get the line fouled or only be able to toss it 15 feet. And, predictably, I brushed off his warning not to make a grab for the reel when the fish made its first major run. Big mistake. Those spinning handles slammed my fingers. They don't call it a ``knuckle-buster'' for nothing. Greenhorns just have to learn the hard way, don't they?

``I know I'm being hard on you, but I just want you to be a better fisherman,'' Hartman explained.

Of course, he did make be a better fly-angler, and now I can brag about it. I paid my dues and got off some monster casts in the end.

The trip offered many breakthroughs for me. It was my first time targeting exotic fish, first time ocean fly-fishing and first time hooked up on dorado.

And since I'm no longer a dorado novice, I have every right to propagate the fable of the fish.

Ah, yes, as I recall, that last brute I landed nearly spooled me, 15 times, but that was after it jumped clean over the boat, at which time it temporarily blinded me with its divine colors and . . .

For more information on saltwater fly-fishing in Cabo San Lucas, call Baja Anglers at [phone].

TACKLE BOX

When targeting dorado for fly-fishing, you'll want to have the following gear:

Rod: 11- or 12-weight.

Reel: A quality saltwater reel with a good drag system that is capable of holding 300-plus yards of 30-pound Dacron backing.

Fly line: Tarpon taper or other intermediate-sinking line, or a fast-sinking line.

Leaders: 1-1/2 to 2 feet of 40-pound leader for the butt section, and 2 to 2-1/2 feet of up to 20-pound tippet with a Bimini twist.

Flies: Sardina, Abel anchovy, deceiver, seducer or other baitfish imitations.

Notes: Dorado, or Coryphaena hippurus, are found throughout the world and, according to the guidebook ``Probably More Than You Want to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast,'' have acquired a variety of names, including dolphinfish, dolphin, mahi mahi (Hawaii), bakhti bakhti (Syria) coriphene (France), fei niau fu (Taiwan), ca nucheo (Vietnam) and dakaunomoutas (Cyprus). Coryphaena, meaning ``showing a helmet,'' is the name given the fish by Aristotle; hippurus is Greek for ``horse tail.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--color) The brilliant colors of the dorado lure anglers to an area off Cabo San Lucas called the Golden Gate. Here, a 25-pounder gives a fly-rodder a spirited fight.

(2--color) Joe Contaldi, left, of Canoga Park spurned baitfish to pull in this dorado, which he and Grant Hartman released.

(3--color) The rod of a fly-angler is bent nearly double as he prepares to land a dorado off Cabo San Lucas, above. Baja Anglers operator Grant Hartman, below, prepares to release one of the colorful fish be boated.

Brett Pauly / Daily News

Box: TACKLE BOX (see text)