Tropical fish caught off Oregon Coast

SALEM, Ore. — Off of Florida they’re called dolphinfish. Off of Mexico they’re known as dorado. When it’s caught off Hawaii, they’re mahi-mahi.

Off of Oregon? It’s known as, well, weird.

John Boyer of Salem was at the helm of the Myrtle Bee on Thursday about 45 miles out of Depoe Bay, slow trolling for albacore tuna en route to his home berth in Newport after fishing the Oregon Tuna Classic tournament Friday and Saturday out of Garibaldi, The Statesman Journal reported.

Something slapped the blue Eat Me Lures cedar plug on the rod of Boyer’s daughter, Cindy.

“We were like, ‘Fish on’ and reeling up all of the reels,” she said, “and I go, ‘Dad, that fish just jumped.'”

Tuna almost never come out of the water.

“And he was like, ‘What?’ And then it jumped again,” Cindy said.

From fishing off of Baja, she knew just was it was: A tropical species known there as a dorado.

“We actually caught it on a cedar plug, so very thin, very frail, so I’m actually amazed it stayed on the hook,” Cindy said.

Boyer managed to gaff it and get it on board, about a 14-pounder.

It was a stunner for him.

“Never,” he said about a dorado being caught that close to shore. “I’ve heard of a couple being caught farther off, but this is a first for me.”

A lot of people at the Newport docks never had seen anything like it.

“A couple people said, ‘What’s that?’ ” Cindy said with a laugh, then added about the photos, “People don’t even believe me. They’re like, ‘Oh, you PhotoShopped that.'”

Hard to barbecue a photo, though.

Which is what the Boyers did to this fish on Friday.