Fly Fishing in Baja: The Reel Experience

By Sam Wike

Here's a Montana dude’s thoughts before a trip to fly fish for roosterfish in Mexico:

We leave in 22 days for Baja, East Cape, and the Sea of Cortez to try to hook a roosterfish on a fly. We have been asking everyone what flies, leaders, lines, rods, reels, clothes we should bring and about the best answer we get is "stuff for saltwater." Sweet, I guess we will wing it.

For flies people have told us to imitate the sardinas and mullet down there, yeah no problem because:

a.) We haven't been there and,

b.) I don't know what either of those look like.

Go try to google a picture of one... it's impossible. For lines, the first guy we talked to said all you need is a floating line second guy (the guide down there, name is Jeff) says don't bring any floating lines at all.

Rods and reels are cinch, just bring everything from an 8 weight to a 12 weight and bring back ups because rods break, oh yeah: lines to match because lines break too. Clothes are the only thing I got a handle on: shirt/shorts. Yeah, I can do that.

Organized? Not so much.

Fishing Baja Pangas: Meeting El Guapo

The evening before we met with Jeff DeBrown, owner of The Reel Baja, one of the few professional fly fishing guides in the area, we had all been fishing the beach for the past three days. Most of us were excited to go out in pangas and rest for a while. We had booked three days on the pangas and one day on the beach with Jeff.

So as we are waiting, an employee for Rancho Leonero calls "El Guapo" over the radio, and a panga with a white haired Mexican boat captain is immediately in front of us. His name is Santos and he is from La Rivera, Mexico en Baja Sur.

Santos pulls the Panga to a halt in front of some flats near the sardina traps. He asks a reasonable but surprisingly simple question, "Are you going to fish?" I looked at Matt with a blank stare and said, "Well yes...I mean...yea." Groovy, how in vogue are we right now fishing for roosters?

In three or four casts Matt hooks a roosterfish. I'm glaring at him as he smiles and backing is spooling off his reel. Meanwhile, I'm in la-la land, Santos is screaming, "Gallo, Gallo, Gallo," pointing for me to cast at combed up roosterfish everywhere crashing sardinas.

Pro-tip: Don't grab gel spun backing when a Rooster is running. Matt and I are doubled up on roosterfish... now I know we're cool. By 9:30 am Santos had us tallied at nine roosterfish in the boat, as well as a few Spanish mackerel, ladyfish, Jack Crevalle and other fish.

My arms were actually tired from fighting fish. I didn't know that really happened in fly fishing.  I thought it was just more bravado, just something we say when we’re bragging about a 20-inch trout which I can land all-day long. I was actually sweating by 9:30 in the morning.

And it's not sweat like, "I'm in Baja's summertime 110 degree weather," sweating, it's more like, "I'm in Baja's summertime 110 degree weather and I just finished a marathon," sweating.

By 11 were asked Santos if we could just go drive the boat around. He was good with that, he wanted to go look for dorados. Literally, not ten minutes later, we hooked a dorado, unreal. Then a rainbow runner. Then multiple bonitos. By noon, we had hooked so many fish, Matt and I were ready to celebrate. So we did.

Thanks to The Reel Baja and Jeff DeBrown for a great trip. More stories from Baja and fishing with Jeff and The Reel Baja coming soon... www.thereelbaja.com