La Paz April 17-24

Nicely done.  All the pictures rock.  But my fav so far has to be Danny with his monster from the kayak. 

Dorado.  Always be ready for a dorado to show up, because inevitably they did.  It's early in the season for them and we encountered mostly small ones.  So what did we do?  We sized down for them, with many coming on small spinning rods.  A live sardinas was the ticket when one showed up, but we got a lot on the feathers on a troll as well as a few tossing smaller krocs.  Sight fishing these was a quick adrenaline rush that played itself out over and over again.

-Allen

You see dorado.  I see fish taco.  More...

Pargo and Cabrillo.  My first drop of the trip and I caught a Cabrillo.  These were ever present and prevented us from getting bored on the yoyo.  Bushy even got a rarer golden cabrillo.  To make matters interesting, we'd take breaks from the deep water and toss topwater or live bait up against the shore.  This made for some explosive cabrillo strikes with lots of fish getting off in the rocks.

-Allen

Sierra.  My first drop with a sardinas and not 10 seconds into it  my reel starts racing.   Swing and a miss.  Hook gone.  Repeat.  Same outcome.  It only took me 2 drops to learn.  Wire leader.  Drop again and we have ceviche for lunch.  The sierra were everywhere.  Live bait worked well.  Diving plugs worked well.  We'd get them on the yoyo.  And a cedar plug trolled behind the boat took its share.

-Allen

Skipjacks and Bonito.  There were so many of these that we literally got sick of them.  Any time we'd move in the big boat, we'd drop back some feathers, rapalas, and cedar plugs.  We always got skipjack tuna, singles, doubles, triples, and quads.  It got so bad that on the final run back to port, no one wanted to pick up the rod when we had a double header go off.  It was then, and only then, did we pull the lines from the water.  We had them bust out of the blue and steal baits that were casted at dorado.  And one morning we even had a top water skipjack bite.  The skippies were herding squid to the surface and we stopped to try to net some up.  We couldn't resist.  Two of us grabbed our top water rods and got bit within 2 chugs on the surface.  What a blast that was!!!

BTW, skipjack makes great Hawaiian Poke.  Boogie-D was all over making that almost every day.

-Allen

There were 4 of us on this trip.  Danny V (aka msgdan) from  New Jersey (he went to Montague Island, AK with me 2 years ago), Boogie-D from Hawaii (I've fished with him a couple of times over on the Islands), and our very own SCAllen.  We were supposed to have a 5th but yet another medical emergency meant he had to cancel out the morning of.

The boat had enough room to sleep 5 comfortably with the captain sleeping up top.  More info on the boat can be found here ... http://seascapecharters.com/index_power.html

I want to thank deepcolor for turning me on to this opportunity.  This is the same La Paz charter he took last year and he did the legwork in generating the interest with the charter to do such a trip.  Too bad he couldn't go.

We rented P13 Angler editions from Baja Outdoor Actvities ... http://www.kayactivities.com/

BTW, I am the king of the needlefish, so much that they started calling them Allenfish.  At one point I turned to Danny and said, "you want to see me catch a needlefish?" then casted out.  Bam!  One needlefish CNR'd.  Then I said, "you wanna see me do it again?".  Bam!  Another needlefish CNR'd.

-Allen

LOL Allen is the new king of the Aha! aka needle fish! aka Allen fish... That was so funny. I had a great trip and enjoyed the guys company a lot... there was so much fishing going on it was one big blur of fishing from day light to dusk.. we caught a lot of fish... ate a lot of fish... gave away a lot of fish and we even released three or more mahi mahi and much more.. what a blast... the top water action with poppers was really exciting for me... nothing like watching a hungry fish exploding on your lure...

there is a weird weather phenomena here called the Coromuel winds and have a tendicy to rock your world late at night.. that was intresting for sure...

if you like skip jack tuna you will love it here as Allen said we got so sick of catching them but they sure were fun on light top water poppers. pretty soon you can bet big predators will move in on those aku... I will never forget this trip or the great time i had with bushy, pole pole, and danny V. Thanks guys that was awesome... ALOHA  p,s what happened to leaking this out slowly... LOL like kids on Christmas day was how i remember the first kayak launch....

Allen, 

I envy you in the utmost fishing fashion. 


Question: Of the several pics of Dorado, there seems to be a difference in what their heads look like.  Is this due to size/age, sex of fish, or other species specific changes.

For example.  This one has very little in the way of overhead projection.


And this one is more prominant.  Beautiful fish regardless!

The big headed ones are males.  I think we only caught one the whole time and that's the one that Boogie is pictured with.

-Allen

Damn I'm jealous!  Fishing the salt in shorts and sunscreen.  Mmmmmm
Looks like a lot of fun. 

-Spot-

That is way cool! such diversity of fish. What a trip!

Man your killing me!  I was in Baja last month and caught a few Cabrillo and Pargo out of a borrowed yak in front of the house we were renting. It was a blast, but you really have shown me what I was missing.  Awesome trip! Next time I head down there I'm going to make sure to turn up my effort a notch!  Great Pic's!

Great Report A.  I'm glad it went well for you all.  The Sea Fortuna is one of only a few boats which allow bareboat charter that is set up for fishing.  Plus the service we experienced there in La Paz was superior to the Florida charters we've done.  And like you said, the sleeping arrangements are set up really well on that boat with bunks and wide benches in the main salon.

Well done.  Let us know when you or your crew have posted some video. 

DC.

all i can say is WOW 

i now know what i want for my next birthday