The golden dorado is a bucket-list fish, sure. Ranging from Andes headwater rivers in Bolivia all the way to the southern marshlands of coastal Argentina, they are an amazing fly rod fish and one that has gained a lot of admiration over the last decade or so.
The video above highlights the fly fishing for golden dorado at a lodge in Argentina, but these fish are hearty and can withstand lots of different environments. They can swim alongside peacock bass in small jungle headwaters or dodge massive caimen in sweeping marshlands that look a lot like the Everglades.
They’re voracious predators but also have that brown-trout pickiness to them—at times, they simply won’t hit a fly and at others, they’re unbelievably aggressive. I’ve always thought, just by the way the fish looked, that it might be a distant relative to trout or salmon, but biologists say it’s not. No matter. It’s an amazing fish, regardless of its lineage.
— Chris Hunt