The running of the bulls at Pamplona
has nothing on the running of the toros at Punta Arena in Baja, Mexico.
I’m on the first day of a
seven-day fly-fishing trip on the Sea of Cortez south of La Paz.
We’re doing some shore fishing at the point just north of Las
Arenas Resort. The sun is
setting, firing up the clouds in the blood red color of a matador’s
cape. Perhaps that’s what sparks the toros, what the locals call jack
crevalle, fish that fight like bulls.
Sea birds wheeling over a patch of
water are the tip-off. We
run up the beach and wade out into the water. Suddenly it erupts in
froth as frenzied baitfish try to escape the toros, who are driving
their dinner toward shore. Hundreds of jack crevalle explode out of the
water as I cast. One hits my popper, a surface fly designed to imitate
the splashy struggle of a wounded fish. Just as quickly the fish breaks
off and I am left standing, shaking my head as the “blitz” subsides
as quickly as it began.
Sunset at Punta Arena.
This is a good introduction to the wonder and excitement of
salt-water fly-fishing in Baja. The
Sea of Cortez is brimming with marine life, and something is always
eating something else, it seems. I’m
on a trip organized by Gary Bulla, who’s instructing two fly fishers
from New Jersey. I’m
partnered with Jeff Priest, an avid salt-water fly fisher from Marina
del Rey.
When I told my wife I was planning a fishing trip to Baja in July,
she questioned my sanity and ability to tolerate heat. “But that’s
when the fishing is best, when the water warms up,” I said.
My wife suggested I bring a cooler on the trip and bring back
some fish. The hotel will clean and freeze the fish so I said “no
problema,” after all I was the mighty hunter and provider.
Las Arenas is about an hour’s drive south of La Paz, the last half
on a dirt road. Despite its isolation, the resort serves up good food
and comfortable ocean front accommodations in addition to the
mind-blowing fishing.
We soon settle into a routine: Up before dawn for huevos, juice and
coffee, out in a panga, a motor skiff, for the run to where the fish are
biting. Después fishing, we siesta by the fresh water pool under the
thatched shade of a palapa, and then tie flies until dinner.
Siesta time.
Jeff Priest is on a mission to refine his JP sardina fly pattern that
imitates the local baitfish, a flat iron herring that the pangeros call
sardina. By the end of the week, I know that Jeff has succeeded.
When the fly is in the water, I can’t tell the imitation from
the baitfish. And the proof is in the number and species of fish we
catch on his fly: tuna, dorado, skipjack, a rainbow runner, cabrilla,
roosterfish, and even a sailfish.
Each morning deciding which fish to go after is like choosing from
the menu of your favorite restaurant on the day you go off a diet. We
can target big tuna, tackle-busters that can weigh well over forty
pounds, or look for dorado, the fish called “mahi-mahi” in Hawaii.
Or there’s roosterfish near shore, or the toros, or skipjack tuna that
fight hard despite their smaller size.
So many fish, so little time.
Gear fishermen, who fish with bait and lures, know about the
reopening of Las Arenas. Once
a getaway for politicians and Hollywood types in the 1970’s and
80’s, the resort was closed for many years until it reopened in April
1998. Fly fishers are the
new kids on the panga. Linda Glassman-Davis, stateside representative
for Las Arenas Resort says that fly fishers represent about a third of
their business, and their numbers are growing. The resort is in the
process of obtaining additional training for their pangeros in meeting
the specialized needs of fly fishers.
The resort offers twelve miles of white sandy beach and excellent
snorkeling right in front of the hotel. Cerralvo Island lies offshore and provides structure for many
of the fish. Between the 19-mile long island and Las Arenas Resort a
deep trench provides a migratory route for pelagic fish and whales.
On our first day we visit the shark buoys south of the island.
A series of crude buoys trailing huge baited hooks are spaced a
mile or so apart and provide cover for the dorado.
Dorado, Spanish for gold, doesn’t begin to describe these fish that
might have been designed by Disney animators.
Also known as dolphinfish, they’re shaped like a hatchet, with
a high forehead. When excited, the dorado lights up like a neon
sculpture, its pectoral fins and back a bright blue, its belly its
namesake yellow-gold. The
dorado eagerly smack my popper and run hundreds of yards into my
backing, punctuated by a series of straight up jumps that display the
fish’s intense hues.
We each catch and release five small dorado. On the way back to Las
Arenas we stop to cast to roosterfish, another of Mother Nature’s
inspired efforts. These fish get their name from the dorsal spines that
stick up out of the water like a cock’s comb. They chase the sardina
tossed out by our pangero and gulp them in a splashy rise.
Life is short and hard for baitfish in Baja.
Jeff Priest and Efren with a rooster.
A seeming oxymoron is that fly-fishing in salt water takes a lot of
bait. Not to put on the end of a hook, but to toss out to attract game
fish to the surface where we cast our flies to them. We begin the mornings by buying bait for ten bucks from one
of the waiting pangas. The
space between the bow and first seat in the panga serves as a live well.
Periodically we stop so Efren can change the water with a bucket to keep
the bait alive, though he’s also rigged an ingenious and simple hose
that forces water into the bait well as we move.
When we run out of bait, we cruise into shore.
Efren drapes a circular weighted net over his shoulder, then
tosses it at a school of sardinia. He stamps his foot on the deck of the panga. The noise herds
the baitfish toward the net, which he hauls out and empties into the
boat. The roosters are picky. We
manage to fool six of them but many chase our flies or poppers and then
wheel away at the last moment without biting, a “refusal”.
The next day we looked for tuna at the north end of Cerralvo Island.
On the run out to the island we encountered a pod of 50 or more
dolphins. As Gary Bulla and
I watched, one jumped a few feet from the boat, it’s black bulk
tracing a graceful curve in the air before it smacked back into the
water, wetting me with it’s splash. We were both so surprised we just
gaped. Better than a tank
side seat at Marineworld.
The tuna weren’t cooperating that day, so Efren took me to an area
where small patches of sargasso, floating seaweed, dotted the water.
Most held dorado, which seem to like to hang out under something, be it
sargasso, a dead sea lion, or even a floating plastic bag.
I soon caught a number of smaller, “schoolie” dorado and
decided to hunt for bigger game. The dorado is a sprinter, capable of
speeds up to 50 miles per hour over short distances.
Dorado jumping.
I watched as larger “bull” dorado – the males are bigger than
the females and have higher, less curved foreheads – dashed though the
sardina Efren was tossing in the water. I managed to target one of the
bigger bulls and cast to it. I was soon fastened to a fish that made a
dozen leaps as it took out several hundred yards of fly line and
backing. I pumped the rod
and reeled the fish in close to the boat.
I was fishing with a 20 pound leader, the largest allowed by the
International Game Fish Association for fly fishing, and managed to put
about 21 pounds of pressure on it.
It broke. No fish. I had brought the cooler and my wife had
cleared a spot in our freezer for the fish I was supposed to bring back.
I’d let all of them go so far and my reputation as a provider was
looking a little shaky. But
there’s always mañana.
The next day dawned to gray skies, howling wind, rain, and a dazzling
lightning show. No fishing. I made the best of the day, learning to tie
Jeff Priest’s sardina pattern, with the improvements he’d added
after studying the local variety of bait.
I also practiced the arcane art of salt water knots, including
the Bimini Twist (a shock absorbing knot, not a reggae dance), Lefty’s
non slip mono knot, the Allbright, and of course the Spider Hitch. A
properly constructed leader can have as many as seven different knots,
and the big fish test them all.
The following day was clear and cooler. We tried the southern end of
the island and soon racked
up big numbers of skipjack tuna, called bonita
or barrolette by the locals. These “tiny tuna” weighed five to seven
pounds and pulled hard, never giving up. And they loved Jeff’s fly.
After releasing one fish, our pangero tossed Jeff’s leader and fly
back into the water and a fish smacked it the instant it hit the water,
before Jeff even had a chance to cast.
It seems hard to
believe, but you can get worn out catching too many fish, so we headed
over to the shark buoys to try for dorado, but they were elsewhere.
Efren pointed to a patch of reddish water and said “Pargo”. He threw
some bait and the water erupted. We couldn’t get a pargo to take a
fly. Later Gary Bulla, who’s fished the Sea of Cortez for more than a
dozen years, told us we were lucky. If we’d hooked a big pargo, also
called a dog snapper, it would have likely spooled us, taken all our
line and backing before breaking off. Bulla says, “The pargo are the
junkyard dogs of the reef. Big, mean, and strong.”
Jeff spotted a
sailfish; it’s colors light up as it chased some baitfish. He roll
cast to it and the fish took the fly. I was messing with my tackle and
just caught a glimpse of the magnificent fish as it jumped once then
sounded. Efren estimated it’s weight at 80 pounds and Jeff fought it
well, but it spit the hook after about 20 minutes.
We saw some big marlin jumping as we headed back. We’d tossed
the skipjack back; they’re not so good to eat.
My cooler was still empty.
The next day we still hadn’t caught a “tune-AH”. Everyone
called the tuna that, with a rising inflection on the second syllable.
You could hear the excitement in their voices. Gary in particular
wanted us to experience some of these barrels of muscle on a fly rod.
We’d seen them busting bait on the surface, but no hookups.
Gary got his client, Bill Anderson, a consultant from New Jersey,
into a tuna that weighed in at 44 pounds and took an hour and half to
land. Bill was covered in blood from lifting the big fish for photos,
grinning and exhilarated and exhausted from the fight. He jumped into
the water for a cool down and to wash the blood from his clothing.
On the way back to the resort, Gary and his clients spotted a pair
blue whales, the largest animals inhabiting the earth. There are
records of individuals over 100 feet but Gary estimates the biggest
whale at about 70 feet long. The
whales sound with a flick of their flukes.
Gary’s clients are ecstatic over the fishing, too.
Despite their inexperience Gary’s got them into lots of fish
and they’ve fought them well. Jeff Priest has landed two big “tune-AH”, but I hadn’t
learned my knots well enough apparently, I broke off a couple of fish.
The cooler was sitting in our room, its emptiness mocking me.
One more day left to fish.
Jeff Priest with a 44 pound yellowfin tuna.
The last day we did a double header.
Normally the boats go out at daybreak, and are back by around
one, when the wind picks up. But since we’d been weathered out of one
of our fishing days, we arranged to go out in the afternoon as well,
after a couple hours’ break. This turned out to be a great decision,
as we found a school of tuna busting bait with no other boats around.
Efren grinned and tossed some bait, which disappeared in a geyser of
white water as big tuna smacked the sardina.
Jeff had spent the evening refining his sardina fly once more, tying
a bigger version, adding a couple of long white hen feathers, and a bit
of shiny material along the sides. I had tied some too, and when I
looked at the fly in the water I had trouble telling it from the real
thing. Apparently the tuna did too, as we were both soon hooked up to
big fish. Again I managed to loose a couple of fish. Jeff promised to
supply some fish for my cooler but I really wanted a “keeper”.
Jeff was fighting a big fish as I cast my fly out and hooked another
tuna. This time I hit the fish hard to set the hook then eased up and
let him go. We were in shallow water, less than 60 feet, and the tuna
ran instead of sounding. I wasn’t going to break this one off.
Four times in an hour I thought I had him to the boat, only to have
him run again. Jeff and I passed our rods under and over each other in
the fisherman’s interpretation of the “pas de deux” as the tuna
circled the boat. At one
point both of us were on the bow, back to back, pulling on the big fish. Meanwhile another panga appeared and had its fishermen on
tuna. I yelled as the boat drifted toward my fly line. Pop. The boat
broke my line and I was again fishless.
Author's dodo.
After some fuming and snarling I re-rigged my fly rod for yet another
try. As I readied to cast, out of the corner of my eye I caught the
flash of a large bull dorado streaking toward the bait. I aimed my cast
to lead the dorado, like a wing shot.
The big fish hit the fly as it landed and exploded in a series of
jumps. We followed the fish in the boat and I brought it along side
after about a 35-minute fight. Efren gaffed the 40-pound dorado and
hoisted it aboard. The village will eat.
My cooler will not go home empty this time.
