Loreto ¡Toros!

Fishing from the marina break wall in Loreto is hit or miss. Normally I only catch trumpet fish but on occasion a school of something interesting shows up. In the spring I have seen good sized Cortez halibut in the marina, in the summer barracuda cruise the outer wall and in the past sierra have showed up before sunrise. The sierra haven't been around in a while lost to the pervasive gill nets - hopefully better park management will bring them back.

One August me and Dave found a school of large Toro (Jack Crevalle) off the tip of the break wall. It was a classic bad luck turns out to be good luck story. A day that started in disappointment turned into an outstanding day.

We had been hitting a hot dorado bite offshore but one morning we got up to hard rain. I heard it roll in during the night. Before first light we drove down to the marina through the flooded streets.



Disappointed we consulted our guide and decided not to go out given the poor and possibly dangerous conditions created by the remnants of a tropical storm. It was warm so we ended up hanging out at the marina for a while before heading to breakfast.

Without much to do, in the August heat we weren't going for a hike in the desert, we ended up wandering back to the marina. There a couple of young guys had found the Toro and were catching them with live Jurelitos (baby yellowtail) that they snagged. The Toro were so abundant that getting bait was more difficult than catching Toro. There must have been hundreds of them because a live Jurelito drew an immediate, explosive hit when cast to the school.

We spent a great afternoon hanging out with the local kids and catching Toro and I ended up buying a round of popsicles from the paleta cart.

Be careful when flyfishing at the marina as the locals don't expect that long back cast over the walkway and tourists can be distracted - I'd hate to hook someone with a 2/0 clouser minnow!!!

As you can see from the photos the weather cleared. We ended up taking an afternoon run out to the dorado spots and found some amazing fishing along with a little tequila drinking but I'll save that story for another day.

Panama Graysby

I didn't know what this fish was when I caught it. The photos here fail to fully show the orange and turquoise colors on the head. This is truly a spectacular fish.


The Panama Graysby is a feisty little reef dweller that doesn't get much bigger than this foot long individual. They range from the Sea of Cortez to Ecuador. This individual took a clouser minnow in brown/yellow/white with gold flash in my favorite 1/0 size. I've mentioned clousers so many times that I've included a picture of one with this post. Note that I no longer bother painting the eyes. I always have a few of these in this pattern plus brown/white, chartreuse/white, gray/white, and all white in my box when I head south. They are easy to tie which is good because I tend to loose a lot of them fishing around rocks.

I caught this fish near Loreto in January.

Rose Snapper

Its a little hard to see in this photo but the rose snapper is distinguished by a dark patch below it's dorsal fin, above the leading edge of its pelvic fins.

I caught a bunch of these tasty snappers on flies off the point at San Bruno, north of Loreto. They all took a gray/white clouser minnow in my standard 1/0 size.

It was fairly windy day. To fish the reef, we would motor upwind and wind drift past the point fishing along the way. I used a high stick technique similar to fishing nymphs in a river except the boat was moving rather than the water. By casting down wind of the boat I was able to sink my fly deeply and maintain contact with my fly as we drifted over the reef. Under this type of fishing situation, casting into the wind results in a shallow presentation as the fly gets pulled along by the fast drifting boat.

¡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.