Is that a problem? I don’t have any exact science to prove my case one way or another, other than the long established practice of protecting big fish and other big individuals of a game species, so that they remain in your pool of breeders. I’m not going to go into all of that here, other than to mention the proven efficacy of so-called “slot limits”—that is, when you allow anglers to kill a small number of mid-size fish, while protecting both the young ones and those that make it to the size most of us really hope to catch.
More and more, I set big dorado free. My ego, of course, may suffer, although a quick photo or two usually does just as much, if not more, to satisfy my persistent need for self-aggrandizement than dragging a faded carcass to the kitchen so that everybody else can share in my heroic triumph. There’s probably another kind of self-promotion going on when I casually announce, after dinner, that oh, by the way, I hooked and landed a dorado that would have put the one we just ate to shame—but at least my boasting, however inapproriate or unnecessary, didn’t leave us one less fish that belongs, the way I see it, out there where I just might encounter it again.
Still, it’s not always an easy choice. And when Efren Lucero, nephew of Valente Lucero, tragic victim of a recent fatal heart attack, says to me he wants this big bull dorado to share with his daughter, a nurse in La Paz, over the upcoming Father’s Day weekend, who am I to question the gaff when he aims it at the tired fish?
To paraphrase Yogi Berra, if you have a choice, make it.
Gray’s angling editor, Scott Sadil, once kept a big trout for breakfast overnight in a rain gutter because his room didn’t have a refrigerator.
