BAJA FISHING TRIP DOWN MEX 1

Jan. 2, 2005, Erik Landesfeind, Loreto, Mexico Fishing Trip Report:

I took the advice offered in Gene Kira's column in Western Outdoor News and took the drive down to Loreto. For anyone who has never taken this trip, I highly recommend it. The drive to Loreto took us the better part of two days, but we were treated to some of the most beautiful and diverse scenery I have ever experienced. My fiancee, Rachel Baker, and I departed Long Beach at around 5:00 AM on Sunday December 26th.

We arrived in Guerrero Negro at around 4:00 PM. On Monday morning, we went on a whale watching trip through Malarrimo Eco Tours. Though the trip was interesting and we did see several whales, I found the trip to be too long at 3 hours on the water. The others on the boat seemed to think that the trip was too short, so maybe I'm just not the nature tour type.

Anyway, we departed Guerrero Negro at 1:00 PM and made it to Loreto in about 5 hours. We could have made it quicker but I was cruising along and soaking up the incredible scenery.

Once past Santa Rosalia, a good stretch of the road is right along the water and I actually saw a couple spots of breaking fish from the truck as I was driving. Sadly, most of the schools were out of casting distance of the highway.

In Loreto we stayed at the Hotel Oasis and fished with Arturo's Sportfishing. We fished out of Loreto on Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec. 28-29, 2004. After reading the reports of unrelenting Nortes through the entire month of December, I was happy to find that we had lucked out in having beautiful Loreto fishing weather on both days that we fished. It was blowing 30 to 40 MPH the morning that we didn't plan to fish.

Anyway, we fished just south of Punto Pulpito, approximately 25 miles from the Loreto harbor.

Our first day of fishing, we arrived in the area to find several Loreto pangas drifting around and small schools of fish popping up here and there. The fish were willing to eat the surface iron if you got your jig right onto the breaking fish, but that was difficult to do with all of the pangas drifting so close to one another.

The fish stayed active for about an hour or so and during that time I managed to catch 3 fish on a green sardine Salas 7X light. The fish ranged in size from 15 pounds to about 30 pounds.

I had several more short bites on the jig, but all of my bites came when casting at breaking fish. I fished the yo-yo iron and also blind casted the surface iron when the fish were down, but did not get any bites.

We ended up with 6 yellowtail, the rest caught on mackerel, for the morning and called it quits at around 11:30 AM.

The next morning we ran to the same area, but there was no volume of fish there. We had one spot come up for a few seconds and I hooked one on the surface iron, but the hook pulled. We ran down to San Bruno in search of more yellows but found only cabrilla and bonito, both of which readily bit the iron.

Although the fishing wasn't stellar, it sure was nice to go out and catch a few surface iron yellows a couple of days before New Year's. I will be heading back down to Loreto in February for a fishing trip to Campo San Nicholas.

(See "Mexico Fishing News" online for current fishing reports, photos, weather, and water temperatures from Loreto and other major Mexican sportfishing areas. Vacation travel articles, fishing maps and seasonal calendars, and fishing related information for Loreto may be found at Mexfish.com's main Loreto page.