TWO BAJA TRAILER BOATS FIND
PHENOMENAL FISHING AT LA BOCANA

Oct. 8-14, 2005, Peter Hamann, La Bocana, Baja California Sur, Mexico fishing trip report:

Terry Hastings and I towed our 17 foot aluminum boat "TailBanger," along with two friends, Bob Destremps and Emilio Delpozo and their 19 foot aluminum boat "Relentless," for a week of phenomenal fishing in La Bocana.

The road down was in fine shape along with the paved 30 mile section of the 60 mile stretch to La Bocana. The final 30 miles of dirt road was exceptionally long with very bad washboards just about the entire stretch. With all the gas and gear, we crawled our way to La Bocana making it a 4 hour turnoff.

Fortunately, we arrived late in the evening Saturday night and had an amazing welcome from our friends Juanchys and Juaqin. Juanchys has a two room hotel with the bare basics to help visiting fisherman have a place to stay. It is not 4 star resort, but for a die hard Baja fisherman it's all you need. We were treated like long time friends by the locals who were very warm and generous. These are some of the nicest people I have ever met with a true love for the ocean and what it gives them. They are firm believers in the conservation of the natural resource they so thankfully have in Baja. They have rules and limits for all species that swim and crawl off La Bocana and and strongly practice these rules. I was amazed to hear how strongly they believe, and realize, how they must not take the ocean for granted because it is a resource that could easily run out if it is abused. We felt that they had a better picture of reality compared to many Americans when it comes to the realization that the ocean is not bottomless...one day it could easily be wiped out.

One of their requests while there was to release all Grouper caught in the lagoon since they were spawning, which we happily did. Not only the grouper, but all Bass, Halibut, Triggerfish and one Saltwater Catfish were released back into the lagoon. The Spotted Bay bass fishing was the best we have ever experienced with many times of multiple back to back hookups with quality fish to 3 pounds.

We also released many halibut to 22" and way over a dozen grouper to 8 pounds. The lagoon fishing was one of our favorites due to the amazing scenery mixed with fantastic fishing.

We also had wide open Baja fishing on Yellowtail in the 6-10 pound range along with some pushing 15 pounds. Most of this fishing was done within 1 mile of were we launched in the mouth of the lagoon!

While fishing for grouper the Yellowtail were almost a nuisance...if that's possible. I have never seen so many Yellowtail in my life. We often would fish just short of an hour for the Yellowtail just to start the day with wide open fishing before moving onto the Yellowfin tuna. This was a great way to start a day because anything after that was just icing on the cake!

We fished for Yellowfin 4 of the 6 days, with one day being bad due to wind, which we expected. The other 3 days was wide open Yellowfin fishing while trolling with the porpoise and throwing bait. Two of the three days we had more triples than any other type of jig strike with all fish running 20-32 pounds, average being 25 pounds. It was a Yellowfin frenzy that didn't seem to stop until you decided to stop.

With beautiful sunny skies and fishing like this it just couldn't get any better. The last day of Yellowfin fishing was singles and a few doubles with a good portion going on live mackerel.

These fish were some tough fish, especially when you got them on a bait stick!

Our trip ended with a great lobster dinner prepared by Juaqin and Juanchys along with some of their good friends joining us with some tequila sampling and local guitar playing by Capt. Martin. With the amazing kindness of the people combined with the phenomenal fishing it will be a trip that none of us will every forget!