Baja Mexico fly fishing update and report for January 5th 2009
Written by - Jeff deBrown
Owner/Guide
The Reel Baja
Hello everyone,
Wow!! This is all I can say about the last few weeks I have encountered. I want to apologize to everyone for not getting a report up for quite some time but I have been very busy fishing. Since my last post I finished my season in Magdalena bay returning home on the 22nd of December and then going right into Christmas. On the 26th of December I headed over to Cabo to guide some guests. I came home to Buena Vista on December 31st to be with my family to welcome in the new year and then it was right back over to Cabo on January 2nd and I just returned. I will be headed back over to Cabo in a couple of days to fish with some more of my clients.
Looking back on the 2008 fly fishing season here in Baja it was quite good. We started the spring on a high note with the North winds ending quite early giving us some excellent fishing beginning in March. In late March we started to see the bait along our shores and that continued throughout the spring and into the summer and we continued to see good populations of bait all the way until mid November. This bait provided us with very good fishing in 2008 along our beaches for rooster fish, jack crevelle, lady fish, pompano, and many other species. Along the beach and inshore fishing for rooster's took center stage. This past year as we saw very good numbers of rooster fish all year. Most of these fish were between five and fifteen pounds but do not get me wrong we saw plenty of bigger roosters between twenty and fifty pounds along the beach and inshore if you were willing to put in the time and be out looking for them.
2008 was also a good year for fly fishing offshore here in Baja. Locally here in the East Cape we saw some good fly fishing for Yellow fin Tuna in late April and early May. Later in May we started to see the stripe marlin move in and they continued to provide action into November. I would have to say that 2008 provided us with some of the best fishing for sail fish that I have seen in the past couple of years. We had heavy numbers of sail fish in the East Cape area beginning in June and some of the boats were still catching them in Mid November. The Dorado fishing in2008 was over all pretty good. We saw a good number of Dorado push through in the spring and the numbers during the summer months were average for us. We did see another increase in Dorado late summer and early fall.
For me personally the highlight of 2008 was the time I spent in Magdalena Bay running my fly fishing in blue water seminars. I have been fishing in Magdalena for the past few years running trips and each year they seem to get better and better. I offer many different packages in Magdalena but my favorite is where we live aboard a boat for four to six days at a time chasing the marlin, tuna and Dorado along with a few Wahoo that are in the area. The blue water fly fishing in "Mag" during the months of November and December is like no other. Magdalena bay is one of the best places in the world to catch a stripe marlin on a fly. We see very high numbers of marlin along with all the other blue water species mixed in.
This past year in Magdalena was quite special as we had great action for the minute we arrived on November 2nd until we departed on December 22nd. We had plenty of marlin on each trip. At times they were difficult to get the to look at the teasers because this year we had more bait in the water than in previous years. Most of this bait was small in the two to six inch range and a lot of it. Do not get me wrong we caught our share of marlin this year. What was nice was if the marlin did not want to cooperate we had some of the best fishing for yellow fin tuna and Dorado that I have ever seen. On one trip we caught a Dorado and as the school came to the boat we decided to turn off the motors on the boat. We did not turn them back on for two full hours as we were free casting to Dorado the entire time that were swimming around the boat. Most of the Dorado we encountered this year were between ten and twenty five pounds but we had plenty of dorado that were in the thirty to forty pound class. The tuna were all very nice quality fish between twenty and sixty pounds with some bigger ones mixed in that took a lot on some equipment and leaving us scratching our heads and saying I wonder how big that one was?
As I write this and reflect on the fly fishing in Baja during 2008 I can not help but get excited about what we will see in 2009. I believe that we will see some great fishing along with a few laugh's and the making of some great memories. I want to wish all of you the same for 2009. I hope to see many of you here in Baja during the 2009 season. If you can not get here to Baja to fish just make sure you at least go fly fishing. I wish you all a happy 2009.