Surf Perch

The thing about fish in Baja is that they can be agressive. This little surf perch is one of the smaller fish I have caught in Baja. Other small fish include bait-sized baby jurelitos (yellowtail), a rainbow wrasse that was barley bigger than my fly, and several sardina that got snagged when I was fishing around bait schools.

¡Toro!

¡Toro!

Also known as Jack Cervalle, the Toro is a great game fish. Often travelling in large schools, these fish are ferocious predators. Working together, schools of 100s of similar sized individuals will circle and trap bait against the shore. I have snorkeled through schools of Toro attacking sardinas and watched as they pinned the bait to the beach by forming a curtain from the surface to the bottom. At regular intervals Toro would dash into the bait school, grab a sardina, and then return to their place in the formation. Dragging a minnow pattern through a school of feeding Toro draws ferocious hits. This one is a smaller individual - note the 1/0 clouser minnow in its mouth. I'll post some bigger ones later. This fish was caught during the spring at El Cardonal between La Paz and Los Barriles.

Pez Gallo

I know the pictures are terrible but I couldn't resist posting them. While taken with a disposable film camera they are special to me. I had caught Paz Gallo before, including some large ones, but always with conventional gear. This guy was my first on a fly. He took a 1/0 brown and yellow clouser minnow over the reef just north of Loreto between Coronado Island and the mainland. Large schools of rooster fish used to patrol this area but gill netting has really hammered them. You can still find them in the area but its hit or miss.

In January 2006, I arrived days after a commercial panga had wrapped a school of about 100 good sized rooster fish at this spot. Ongoing netting in the Loreto Bay National Park (including this area) continues to impact the fishery. Inshore fish species like the rooster fish are particularly vulnerable. Don't get me wrong there's still a lot of great fishing here but as we have seen at Puerto Escondido just a few seasons without nets can really make a big difference.