BajaNomad

zillion times easier.

Skipjack Joe - 6-15-2012 at 08:16 PM

How do you explain that, Glenn?

The artificial is made to imitate the live bait. The better the imitation the better the lure. But nothing is better than what you're imitating.

Unless you've got the fish worked up into a froth and you impart movements to the articial that generates a strike. I've seen guys simply drop their rod tips in the water at Redondo and whip them from side to side. Seems to work on bonito.

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 12:18 AM

Heh. I haven't used bait so long in freshwater that I can't remember what it's like. Mostly negative experiences from what I recall. You can do quite well with worms though. Most of the big browns have been fished out of the Tuolumne with nightcrawlers floated downstream. Deadly. Actually literally deadly because they inhale it so deep it's hard to save the fish afterwards. I never used them and never liked those that did.

Then there was about 15 years of fishing with spinners. Not really very effective except on planters.

But fly fishing opened up a new world. There was an endless amount of experimentation and you had to really understand and pay attention. A good fly fisherman has to know the bugs and their behavior. That's when the numbers went up.

I suppose you could somehow impale a mayfly on your hook and catch something. I've seen guys use those 2" stonefly nymphs successfully. But that's a 4 week window on only a few California rivers. What do you do the rest of the year? Most trout feed on flies/nymphs that are too small to be used as bait.

Bass lures are now so advanced that they may as well outfish bait. Those plastics feel so real they will hold on even when you try to rip them out of their mouths.

I know what you're saying about barracuda on live bait. Gotta let them run with the bait a bit before setting the hook because their mouths are so narrow you can miss half of the strikes. I was fishing Pt Loma one day when they only bit on mono, 12lb or less. Unless I hooked them outside the mouth they'd cut me off. Very frustrating because they were big barries, not those slimy pencils you get on the cortez.

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 07:54 AM

Yes, those direct drive fly reels can knock the crap out of your hands. Even when you know it's coming you still can't seem to get your fingers out of the way. Were you fishing for roosters or tuna with the fly? It was the tuna that were the worst.

With the exception of a few species I'm not sure fly fishing is well suited for salt water. For tuna you need a boat load of sardinas to whip the tuna into a feeding frenzy before your fly has a remote chance of being bit. And with dorado you need to find a really decent school of fish in order to get action. That's becoming increasingly hard to find these days.

But bonefish and a flyrod? It's the perfect marriage.

---------------------------------

I never thought much of Gary Graham. His books lack much content and he's one of the dullest speakers I've ever heard. Your friend Nick Curcione is a much more engaging speaker. But, in truth, I've never seen the man fish. So I'll take your word that he knows his stuff. He's been fishing that area now for over 30 years. Of course he's gonna learn a few things. It's like those guides in Montana. They seem so skilled. The thing is - the float the same river every day all summer. Some are so into it that they fish the evening hatch after they drop their clients off.

Gene Kira vs Neil Kelly

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 08:14 AM

The Baja Catch states that virtually all the sections about locations come from Neil's notes and experiences.

The first edition also states that virtually all chapters were written by Neil as well, if I remember right.

Neil was the ultimate troller, though. The whole inshore trolling approach to baja fishing is primarily Neil's thing. That whole bluewater thing was not to his liking.

The rapala-like lures now are incredibly real looking. The old broken-back rebel at $4.95 still is just as good or better than all of them. The side to side action of that hinged lure comes closest to a fish's movement.

DavidE - 6-16-2012 at 08:17 AM

I remember one very warm October afternoon at Gardiski lake in the Eastern Sierras. Elevation 11,000 ft. The sky was full of horse tail cirrus clouds. A storm was coming and I knew what it brought was going to close Tioga Pass and the road to Saddlebag Lake for the winter.

Just me, my malamute, a small pack with a big lunch, a secret treat, a Boron X fly rod and a bunch of flies.

Every time a # 16 Mary Lake Special lit on the water I had a Brookie on. After the first two fish, I nail filed the barb off. Fish after fish. Catch and release. I lip hooked them and wore cotton gloves to protect them as they were shaken off the hook.

The next day at home, the snow flurries arrived. I could not raise my arms they ached so bad. I must have caught and released several hundred fish.

My secret treat was special trout food from a local fish hatchery. Ten pounds worth. I cast handful after handful along a 100 meter stretch of lake. The water boiled. It was the least I could do for having one of the outstanding outdoor days of my life.

Osprey - 6-16-2012 at 08:37 AM

David E, you're pretty good with Español. So we can all better appreciate your adventure tales, tell us the difference between mentiroso, hablador and accuentista. (sp)

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 09:16 AM

Never been to Gardiski Lake but here are a couple of scanned photos from Saddleback Lakes.

They say if you want big fish you go to Montana. If you want poetry you go to the Sierras.

saddlebag002p.jpg - 48kB

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 09:19 AM

The wind had picked up, which ended the surface bite. This is Labor Day weekend.

saddlebag001p.jpg - 48kB

Cisco - 6-16-2012 at 10:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by whistler

Heck,what did the lift pole fisherman use for tuna?"Tuna Picks"that's what! Actually they still use them.They still use bait when the bite is touchy but when they are making money it's with the "Picks".

[Edited on 6-16-2012 by whistler]


Hmm. Never heard them called "picks". We called the chicken-feather
artificial we made squids.

DavidE - 6-16-2012 at 11:10 AM

Osprey the difference between the words is negligible. If you are alluding to my catching of "several hundred fish" Gardiski Lake is home to one type of fish, brook trout in the six to nine inch range. Try casting a fly and counting "one thousand one, one thou...." strike. That isn't a fish story. I was catching and releasing a fish per minute and sometimes more than that. An eight inch brook trout isn't that hard to land, amigo. I started fishing around eleven and stopped around five PM. Gardiski is a very small lake. But from the Saddlebag lake graded road, it is straight up the mountain. We figured a fifteen hundred foot climb in two miles.

So I shake my head in wonder, when someone would use words like mentiroso. I only posted this account because it was extrordinary. You want to hear another good one? Try limiting out (10 fish at the time) on golden trout, on opening day. One of my neighbors Robin Matthieu, beat the socks off me in a summer of "who can catch the largest golden trout". I thought I had him beat with a 15 incher. One evening he pounded on my front door, and when I opened it there he stood with a two-pound golden. Caught in O'Dell lake also in the Twenty Lakes basin. He wouldn't tell me what fly he used. But the CHP officer who ran a fly tying business in Bridgeport took photographs and the story made the Reno Evening Gazette.

So am I also an accuentista, when I tell you I fished from shore ten days straight in 1964 from Sta Rosalia to Bahia Concepcion and never got a bite?

Pescador - 6-16-2012 at 12:16 PM

Well, that theory goes to pot when you change the species. With Billfish, there is almost no comparison between live bait and artificials. I will outfish any troller by a long shot by a well placed live bait on Blue, Black, and Stripers. Same goes for Yellowtail in our area around Santa Rosalia. The tourist guys come with all their jigs and Yo-Yo's and they just can not compete with the live bait guys.

Osprey - 6-16-2012 at 12:31 PM

El Hablador


There is a club for liars. I think the official name is the International Liars Club. I do not know the requirements for membership. From time to time, on a slow news day, perhaps you can recall, like me, reading or hearing about their annual meeting/contest and the announcement of the winner of the year. The winner, that is, of the biggest lie contest. I can't guess at what other things could jam the busy schedule of this once-a-year gala but the lie-off, I'm sure, is the big thing for these folks. The liar who won in l989, took the honors with "I once met an honest fisherman".

I have been a fisherman all my life and, like most fishermen, everywhere, I can take good-natured kidding. This Liars Club thing just went too far. It is a sad commentary on the media people when they publish hurtful things just for the sake of profit. I suppose, in this case, they felt comfortable publishing such slanderous stuff because "fishermen" are such a large and diverse group. They believed that if they offended everyone who fished, the insult would be diluted by the number of people they slammed.

Who are these "fishermen"? The term almost defies definition -- I will give you my idea of the kind of people who are not in the group. A true fisherman is not a person, age 71, who for the first, last and only time was invited to go fishing, in a boat, on a lake. We are talking about a group of people, who, once hooked, cannot NOT GO FISHING. These are not people with a hobby or a passion, they are analogous to groups called "people who eat food" and "people who breath air".

Where the rumor started, that fishermen lie, I do not know. If I were pressed I would have to say it had something to do with the description of the fish they didn’t land; those wily creatures that evaded capture. The ones that got off the hook right at the boat, shore, ledge, bow, log, ice, etc. The fish are gone and can't set these stories straight but I can tell you there is a big, big gap between an out and out lie and a little exaggeration. Even in the Mexican culture here in my little fishing village in Baja California Sur, the distinction is very clear. A liar is a "mentiroso", one who tells untruths but an "hablador" is a storyteller, a teller of tales. An “accuentista” is one who colors an account with little dollops of harmless exaggerations.

If I'm right, it's this occasional exaggeration about a lost fish that keeps the fire burning. Is it impossible that out there, in every fishable body of water, are fish that are unusually large and strong and aggressive? Is it so hard to believe that these anomalies of the fish world exist? If they are bigger and stronger and fight harder, does it not follow that they are the very ones most likely to escape?






Where are these wondrous fish? Did they all die? Are they still out there waiting to be caught? I've been pondering this for a long time. I dreamed of fishing the waters of the Sea of Cortez when I was just a kid. My dream began to come true 45 years ago--I have been able to fish this wonderful sea on vacation outings almost every year while I worked in the U.S. and now that I am retired here I can jump into my little "panga" fishing boat anytime the urge strikes me.

There are grumblers complaining that the Sea of Cortez is "fished out". "It's not like it used to be", "the long-liners have got em all", "the shrimp boats have ruined everything", "the hotel boats and commercial fishermen have damn near wiped them out", etc.,etc. These comments, and worse, are mostly from fishermen who lack skill or luck. Lately I have heard happier banter right here in my village. The fishermen here, "pangueros", are talking about the "pez de historia", the "story fish" that still abound. Some say they sometimes school up and they have been seen around Cerralvo Island, north of here and as far south as Punta Frailes. I believe them.

Exactly 12 days ago Julio and I were trolling slowly with dead macerela at the nine mile mark -- west to east, looking for scum lines or signs of surface action. At 10:20 my big Penn reel went off, singing a loud, sweet song of disappearing 80 pound mono. We could not believe our eyes when a huge Dorado, estimated at 150 pounds, almost seven foot of fish, went thrashing at the end of my line. Since the largest Dorado caught in this area, in all of known fishing records, was 90 pounds you know our hearts were at full throttle and all the juices were flowing. My 55 HP Johnson outboard motor thrust the small craft forward to set the hook deep in the mouth of the monster. He was hooked good, took two more beautiful leaps, took another 150 yards of line in what seemed like parts of a second. Julio took the helm and was after him, I reeled as fast as the brute would allow and just as we both felt good about the control, the line went slack.

I did not hang my head about the loss of this great fish -- I finally got my chance at a "pez de historia" and now have a genuine fish tale to tell my kids and grandkids (and anyone else who will listen). I’m just glad it happened now, before all the big ones disappear.

baitcast - 6-16-2012 at 12:32 PM

Next best thing to going fishing is a fishing gab-fest about anything fishin,great pic,s Igor.
Rob

Cypress - 6-16-2012 at 01:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Pescador
Well, that theory goes to pot when you change the species. With Billfish, there is almost no comparison between live bait and artificials. I will outfish any troller by a long shot by a well placed live bait on Blue, Black, and Stripers. Same goes for Yellowtail in our area around Santa Rosalia. The tourist guys come with all their jigs and Yo-Yo's and they just can not compete with the live bait guys.

Live bait, if you can get it, is the best bait.:D

DavidE - 6-16-2012 at 01:05 PM

Whatever happened to the Dorado fishing just off the northwest side of Isla San Marcos? In late September, when the humboldt squid gather... just before dark... This trip occurred thirteen years ago and is the single and solitary time I had phenomenal fishing in the gulf. Fishing from a Sevylor inflatable in the Sierras was different. I managed to become an adequate fisherman there.

I grew up (summers) on the banks of the Madison river in Montana. One day I hooked a fish that ran me through a wringer. It was no contest. I stood over a really deep hole and tall brush stood just downstream. I don't know how big the fish was but it was no contest and it wasn't "addictive". What that episode did was teach me my limits. My cousin, a registered guide by the name of Chuck Armitage (Blue Moon Saloon, Cameron Mont) saw the fish and said it was a "whopper". It was like someone tied my 10 lb Trilene XL onto the bumper of a Buick and drove off. This occurred in 1972. It was done with a bullhead for bait. It cured me of the "catch a big, a really REALLY big mofo". I was there for the '59 Hebgen Lake quake. The madison all but dried up. So-called "fishermen" arrived by the bus load. The next year huge browns appeared mounted all over southwest Montana. Real sportmanlike. I'd rather catch all those little Brookies out of Gardiskie.

Right now, I would give anything for a huge slab of Dorado that could be cooked over a bed of glowing "Uña de Gato" coals. Fat chance. I can no longer fish. The local cooperartiva just never seems to have fish for sale. And I love fish! What am I saying? Right now I'd give anything for atun, jurel, cochi, any good tasting fish.

Sadly, I cannot manage a rod and reel anymore. Nor can I walk more than fifty meters without problems. I haven't tried to go back to high altitude since my heart problems appeared. But I am glad I did what I did when I did it.

baitcast - 6-16-2012 at 02:13 PM

Osprey I to hooked a huge wondrous but unidentified monster of a fish one nite at Guadalupe island 1963,I,ve told this story over an over again until people beg me to stop but I can,t:rolleyes:

The hook up was at 12;00 midnight,my rig was a 6/0 and 60# and a fat live mackerel on the stern of the first Red Rooster,to shorten the story the first run nearly emptyed my reel he stopped to catch his breath which gave me to do the same,by now I,m in the bow and its very dark and I,m tripping on everything and my back is killing me but loving every minute,Its 1:30 now and I,m dieing will he never stop!

Then it happened nothing but slack,he must be coming to me but alas he was gone,and I think of him from time to time,and people will just have to get used to hearing the tail again:lol:

I to don.t know how to quote:?:

[Edited on 6-16-2012 by baitcast]

woody with a view - 6-16-2012 at 02:47 PM

the one that got away.

it's the reason i keep fishing.....

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 04:09 PM

Whistler,

Me thinks there is more to Gene Kira's poor abilities than just poor abilities.

I wish I had been more involved in the San Ignacio salt project. As it turned out it was one of a very few times when baja soil was saved. There's going to be a similar pier and dredge project coming up at San Francisquito in a few years. But very little public outcry.

Skipjack Joe - 6-16-2012 at 05:42 PM

Just out of curiosity, Whistler. Where did you read all that? I don't remember coming across such information.

Oh, I just read "This is all I'm going to say about Kira"

No need to continue then.

[Edited on 6-17-2012 by Skipjack Joe]

Marc - 6-16-2012 at 06:16 PM

Barracuda on an artificial. New Guinea 1994.

late to this thread

captkw - 6-16-2012 at 08:39 PM

HOLA,,,mmmmm let me get this straight !! some yahoo is saying lures are better than live bait !!! you have not done much fishing !! NO? Thats THE 1st time I have heard that in public...BUT your right sir, for if I would argue, that would make 2 fools...get a GRIP !!! dont fool with mother nature !!!! K & T :cool:

wishLER

captkw - 6-16-2012 at 09:28 PM

HOLA,AMIGO when that book first came out I already had Many,many years fishing all over b.c.s and I liked the book !! and still do..but when someone/anyone says that a tinny is the only way to go,, I have to laugh !! and live bait can be outcaught with lures,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,sorry that "I" was the first to spill the beans !! but the fact is some of us other baja guys have a hell of a lot of more time.. also fishing baja and DONT write books about it !! and I don tknow it all BUT I know just a little,little about baja,fishing and boats and have a hell of a lot time fishing baja since I was 17 year old crazy fishing junkie when I first came down byself and at that time you REALLY could catch dinner with a couble of cast from any beach!! bottom line is= if you think that you read it in a book thats the way it is,,Knock yourself out and tight lines to ya..but I can tell you for a fact that if you talked to me via vhf OR LAND LINE or on a beach somewhere you would have a greater understanding>>I did not work all my life so that one day I could go fishing off some remote island/beach !! this is what I have done my whole adult life !!!sinee I was 17....good night. K&T:cool:

[Edited on 6-17-2012 by captkw]

[Edited on 6-17-2012 by captkw]

[Edited on 6-17-2012 by captkw]

BajaBruno - 6-16-2012 at 10:39 PM

Osprey, nicely done witty irony.

(grammar)

[Edited on 6-17-2012 by BajaBruno]

baitcast - 6-17-2012 at 06:35 AM

+1 always love Qsprey,s stuff
Rob