Hooked Up?

In addition to the dangers of line burns (see this post from last February) and Tequila overdoses, Baja flyfishing has other risks.

Casting big, weighted flies from the bow of a small boat in the never cooperative wind has its dangers. I have only been hooked by smaller trout flies but have been smacked in the face by big saltwater patterns. I think it's just a matter of time before tragedy strikes.

I always wear eye protection, including clear polarized lenses for low light situations, and try to remember to pinch down the barbs on my flies. Fortunately, even in the smaller communities there is at least one medical person who has PLENTY of experience removing hooks.

I found this article on the web that summarizes the basics of hook removal quite well.

Fish Hook Removal

Great White Shark on the Fly

Not quite Baja but cool anyways...

Forgotten Shrimp

This is a killer pattern - I found it a long time ago. I think it was on the Internet but have long forgotten its origin. I included it in an article I wrote for Saltwater Flyfishing Magazine - I didn't have a name for it and ended up calling it the Forgotten Shrimp. One day I hope I find its originator and can give them credit.

I tie it fairly small in sizes from 2 to 6. The basic pattern is:

Tail - chartreuse bucktail and crystal flash

Head - chartreuse ultrachenille

Eyes - Red glass beads on heavy monofilament with melted ends to hold the beads on

Body - chartreuse estaz

Back - Green fish skin with silver flakes

Rib - monfilament tied over body

I like to fish this fly on a fast sink tip line often as a trailer to a heavier weighted fly. It has been productive in a variety of areas. It is my favorite fly for fishing the mouths of Pacific side esteros on outgoing tides. In places like Estero Coyote near Abreojos the outgoing tide races through the narrow mouth and creates a river-like environment. I often high-stick this fly much like I would fish a beadhead nymph on the Deschutes River.

Marlin Article

This article in yesterday's LA Times Outpost blog provides a good discussion of some the potential impacts of sport fishing on marlin as they stack up off the west coast of Baja Sur in the fall.

Fishing for marlin and other species can be excellent from Bahia Magdelena South in the fall but anglers should use restraint. Flyfishing with a properly sized rod should minimize the frequency of gut hooked fish and allow for a quick fight and release. Keep the fish in the water - avoid the temptation to drag it over the rail for photos. In my experience fish get gut hooked mostly when bait fishing and allowing the fish to swallow the bait.


Anglers' high marlin catch in Cabo San Lucas raises concerns
1:34 PM, December 31, 2008
Pete Thomas

Outposts has been touching on the phenomenal marlin bite at the Golden Gate Bank north of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific side of the Baja California peninsula.

Just how good has the bite been?

Tracy Ehrenberg of Pisces Sportfishing boasts of the capture of more than 7,000 striped marlin this season, and of a 98.6% release rate. This is just from her fleet, so the overall tally must be incredible.

"After talking to captains with more than two decades' experience, they agreed that they have never seen fishing so good so long in one location," Ehrenberg reports.

Perhaps. But there's a troubling trend off Land's End. Crews aboard the top boats have been aggressively trying to out-perform one another, catching and releasing marlin as fast as they can, striving to make theirs the high boat for a given day.

Captains too. The more marlin flags they fly, the bigger their reputations become.
One-day, single-vessel counts have been as high as 30. When the marlin are bunched up that tightly they simply become too vulnerable.

Undoubtedly, many stripers die after being released. Certainly, most of those that are gut-hooked perish. If you've caught lots of marlin, you've seen at least a few disgorge their entire stomachs during the battle.

Out of curiosity, I asked Michael Domeier, president of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, to comment on this phenomenon. The researcher e-mailed back this morning:

"Most anglers believe that the stomach throwing is a natural event and that the
everted stomach is retracted/swallowed after release. It's possible that billfish have evolved a mechanism for disgorging prey items that they wish they hadn't eaten, or get rid of bones from large prey (bones may be hard to digest)."

"After about a decade of studying billfish with satellite tags, I can say that a disproportionate number of marlin that have thrown their stomachs die after release. I can't say exactly why these fish die, but I have a hypothesis: Fish that are captured with a thrown stomach have been gut hooked and gut hooked fish often die."

"I think the hook actually pulls the stomach out; when the hook/stomach reach the mouth the hook can lodge in the mouth. I have a picture of a black marlin that I took in Australia, the fish is jumping, the stomach is out and the hook can be seen in the corner of the mouth. When you zoom in on the head you can clearly see a tear in the stomach. I tagged the fish and it died."

Thankfully, marlin are now dispersing from the Golden Gate. But they'll be back next winter. Hopefully, the same serious marlin fishermen (and captains) who became powerful advocates of catch-and-release will give up the numbers game and exercise reasonable restraint.

Consider this a New Year's wish.

Great Link for Surf Fishing

Check out this link to a thread on the Southern California Surf Fishing discussion boards. You have to register but this thread is worth it and runs through everything you need to know to catch fish with a fly in the Pacific surf.

The Good Life

Its all about the lifestyle. I realized I haven't posted a photo in a while and things have been getting way too serious around here. If you look very closely you can see me fishing off the rocks below.

This is a great spot where we lived just north of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific Coast. The fishing was sketchy due to the big surf and onshore winds that blew every day. However, we saw many marlin and sailfish jumping from our porch. We also saw a big hammer head shark swim by right in front of the rocks where I liked to snorkel when the surf wasn't too rough!!! Turtles nested on the beach here and obviously the dog liked the place.

Sardina

Sardina, or flat iron herring, are the most common bait fish throughout much of the Sea of Cortez. The pliers in the picture are standard sized to give you a little scale. This picture was taken at the end of the day so the colors aren't quite so strong on the sardina and the distinctive black dot behind the eye is not very clear. Numerous patterns imitate this species, be sure to have some when heading south. In Loreto, netters are available at the marina to fill your panga's live bait tank. The guide uses these fish to lure predatory fish into fly range. Putting just a couple in the water and watching what happens provides the guide with a lot of information about the type and behavior of any fish that might be in the area.

August Dorado

Loreto is having a fantastic dorado season. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to make it down this summer. This picture is from an August evening trip a few years ago at the Bajo las Boyas northeast of town.

My good friend Francisco "Cuervo" Muñoz is helping me untangle a good sized bull dorado. I hooked the fish with a simple fly of blue/white synthetic hair and stick on Mylar eyes tied in a "spread fly" style with a little epoxy around the head to give it the tall thin profile of a bait fish. The fly was unweighted and tied on a 2/0 hook.

If you can I recommend getting down sometime in the next month. I like August better than June and July because there tend to be fewer people around. Its also hotter and there is a greater risk of tropical storms and hurricanes but its all part of the fun!

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.

Under Gunned

When fishing for dorado don't mess around - bring a big rod. In this photo I'm well into a long fight with a medium sized dorado that I hooked on my 10-weight. Notice the sweat. The first 20 minutes were fun, the next hour was not. During dorado season in Loreto, espcially in August when the big bulls show up, bring a 12-weight, fight fish fast, and release them in good condition.

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.