Magdalena Bay Fishing Reports and Sportfishing Vacation Information

Magdalena Bay fishing articles, maps, fishing reports, peak seasons, hot spots, and vacation travel information for the top sportfishing locations of Magdalena Bay, Mexico.

The Magdalena Bay sportfishing area is a fascinating, 140-mile long system of hidden, fish-filled, mangrove-lined channels, shallow open bays, navigable openings to the Pacific Ocean, and access to some of the best fall offshore big game fishing along the coast of North America.

The 70-mile long mangrove channel system and 70-mile long open bay system of Magdalena Bay are separated from the open Pacific by a series of five barrier islands, the largest of which are Isla Magdalena, Isla Santa Margarita, and Isla Creciente, and there are six openings to the Pacific, including Boca de las Animas, Boca Santo Domingo, and Boca Soledad at the northern mangrove channels, and large Boca Magdalena and two smaller openings on the main open bay and the smaller Bahia Almejas to the south of it.

Magdalena Bay, or Bahía Magdalena in Spanish, is located about one-fourth the way up the west coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, centered on about latitude 25 degrees north, and almost everything about fishing here is "different."

For starters, there is almost no vacation travel infrastructure in the entire "Mag Bay" area, except for a couple of small hotels and restaurants more oriented toward the winter whale watching season rather than sport fishing, a very small handful of independent panga fishing guides, all of them strictly part-time, a seasonal surf and fishing camp at Punta Hughes, and a very small handful of other boats available for sportfishing at the area's only two developed towns, San Carlos and Puerto Lopez Mateos.

In addition, a few panga motherships have made the long trip around the Baja California peninsula from San Felipe at the northern end of the Sea of Cortez, one new sportfishing operation has established an operation at Puerto Lopez Mateos, and one fly fishing operation has worked Magdalena Bay's inshore and offshore fishing waters for many years.

Beyond that, the only people fishing anywhere in the entire Magdalena Bay area are local Mexican commercial fishermen and those vacationing sport anglers with private, ocean going yachts or anglers with trailerable boats willing to drive the 800-mile trip from the U.S. border. For any anglers wishing to fly into Magdalena Bay, the closest airports with scheduled service are hours north and south by private car or van service, at either Loreto or La Paz.

For all these reasons, the entire Magdalena Bay area is still relatively undiscovered by the tourist traveler. There is virtually no "fishing pressure" at Magdalena Bay from sport anglers, and there is very little published information about sportfishing in the area, except for maps and descriptions in the Baja fishing guidebook, The Baja Catch, and a book and the weekly fishing reports of Gary Graham of Baja On The Fly, the aforementioned fly fishing operation that services this area.