Baja Wrap Up 2013

Another trip to the East Cape of Baja is in the books, and like every journey down south, it was a memorable one.  Every East Cape adventure begins as a Roosterfish quest.  Like last year there were plenty of Roosters around, but you were hard pressed to find a sardine, which made finding aggressive fish almost impossible.  Most of the roosters were eating Mullet and Ladyfish, which are tough to imitate with a fly.  A few small to medium sized fish were caught on the fly, but the one huge Rooster of the trip was enticed by about a three pound ladyfish trolled behind our 12 foot boat.

We chartered pangas for two days to do a little off shore exploration.  Usually when we hire guides our focus is on Dorado, tuna, Marlin, etc... With an inexplicable lack of dorado and tuna, we decided to focus on bottom fishing in only about 60 feet of water.  This presented the opportunity to catch tasty bottom fish on bait and flies.  We filled the boat with Snappers and Groupers, and both species were caught on flies.  I also added another first to the books with a fly-caught Amberjack.  This was about as much fun as you can have in a day, and we came home with a cooler full of fish, which was definitely a bonus. 

This was another trip where the Roosters didn't fully cooperate, but if you've spent any time fishing for Roosterfish, you know this is a fairly common occurrence.  Fortunately the East Cape is home to such a variety of fish species, that if one kind of fishing is slow you simply switch to another.  Also, if you let a little slow fishing get you down in an unbelievable setting like Southern Baja, you have much bigger problems.  Like always, the water was warm, the drinks were cold, and the people were overwhelmingly friendly.  We'll be eating Baja style fish tacos for the next few months, while dreaming about the next trip.