We had a great time in Baja this year. The fishing was 'off', and towards the end of the dorado season, but we still got into a school of smaller ones, in the 3lb to 10lb class- great fun on 9wt. or less. It was fast and furious top-water flycasting, and awesome-hair sardines were the ticket. A combination strip and drag was the only way to entice a strike, but then they raced each other to the take. We must have caught between 25 and 30 like this.
My buddy caught a couple of skip-jack tuna (one on my squid fly), which took 40 min. each to land, and a couple of nice cow dorado. The billfish were very few and far between. We sighted one marlin and one sailfish during the entire trip. Only one boat (a cruiser) got one small marlin and one small sailfish (60lb class), and they had to go out 25 miles to get them- too far for a panga. Other wise, no one was catching much of anything- even the baitfishers. In fact, we were the only blue-water flyfishers there for the whole trip. So why did we have a great time? For me, being out on the ocean is a great time- period. My fishin'buddy Chuck was great company- he had a story or joke to match any experience- "That reminds me of a story..." was his favorite phrase. We saw whales, porposes, sea lions, turtles, a leaping marlin, leaping manta rays, and lots more. The water chopped up for a couple of days, which was hard on my back, but otherwise the weather and seas cooperated. When the opportunity was there, we fly-fished by the book. Unfortunately, there were not too many opportunities to do so. Just too few fish (although we did catch the 25 or so small ones BTB, and the tuna). Also, we couldn't find any Sargasso-weed, a favorite haunt of dorado. My favorite method is casting poppers along the edges of the Sargasso rafts. One of the reasons a local American gave us for the 'poor' fishing is that the Pacific water was warmer this year than the Sea of Cortez water, so the fish didn't come in to the gulf in anywhere near the numbers as previous years. We even had no success raising the bug bull dorado on my Green Machine as a teaser, and that has never happened before. We did some bottom-fishing a few times just before we went back in (water about 30' deep), and had some very fresh snapper and grouper for late lunches ( a good way to use up unused sardines). While catching lunch, we also caught some trumpet-fish, which look like a giant needle-fish with a trumpet-like tube-mouth. I also caught a stone-fish, whose spines are deadly. We also caught some giant trigger-fish- one had to go 10lbs- and we had them made up into 'saveechie' (don't know how to spell it). They are uuugly, but the meat was like lobster in texture. In all, we probably caught 30 to 40 'bottom fish', gave some to the guide, took a few back, and released the rest. That was probably more than all of the other boats combined. These fish are real bait-stealers, but I grew up fishing these guys, so I was right at home, except for the fly-rod part. We motored right up to a colony of sea lions- cows and pups- on the rocks, and they had no fear of us. I got some great photos. The big bull was just around the corner, by himself, and I got a couple of shots of him, too. I'm using one of these photos as a screen-saver right now- neat stuff. Already signed up for next year. DonO
