As many of you know, my experience in Alaska and some of the people I worked with became very instrumental in my life.  Because of some of the experiences and bonds I made, some of these people I consider friends for life, no matter how long its been since I’ve seen them.

John, I guide I worked with in 2004 and his buddies from Montana, planned a trip to fish the shores of Los Barilles on the Sea of Cortez, about an hour and a half from Cabo San Lucas.  I had the time off and got the invite to meet up with these guys as they had a huge house rented and were looking for more fishing fools to join in on the chase fro the elusive Rooster Fish.  I was like ‘Hell Yeah’, my kind of trip.

The beach fishing for Roosters was tough, but we did end up getting into them on a day we took a charter.  These guys were hard core fly fisherman, I am a fisherman who likes to fly fish when fly fishing gives you an advantage or gear fishing is too easy…  I like slivers on the fly, trout in streams, flats fishing; where the elusiveness of the fly cast can’t be done with gear.  Roosters are not this, nor where they going to boring or too easy by any means on the gear.  After showing up mid way through the week and hearing that no one in the group had hooked into a rooster.  Call me weak, call me non-persistent, a non-purist, whatever, but I came to Mexico to stick a Rooster, so I decided that we were going to live bait rig some mullet and see if we can get one of these suckers to the boat.   It was awesome!  You slow troll, rod in hand, about 1.5mph, and you feel your bait start to get real nervous.  Then you see a rooster come in with its fin all flaired out of the water, amazing sight to see, and amazing how fast and smart these fish were.  It was hard to trick them into eating your whole bait with the hook in it.  You had to give the bait just the right action, feed it just long enough, and set to the hook just right to drive that circle hook in.  The fight – awesome, super powerful fish.  The fish – by far the most beautiful fish I have ever seen and or caught.

We had some adversity and learned some lessons though the day.  Lesson one – the local guides down there are some of the nicest and most fun guys I have ever spent the day in a boat, but I will be bringing my own gear next time.  The sad fact of the matter is this area is very poor and bad drags, faulty terminal tackle, and old line definitely costs us some fish.  Lesson two – do not set the hook on a circle hook!  Circle hooks are awesome, but unless you tighten up just right on them, they do not do there job and you end up just pulling it out of there mouths.  There is no other way I would do it though on a fish you are catching and releasing like these beauties.   We ended up tying our own rigs by the end of the day and using some Berkeley Trilene 20lb Flourocarbon that I had brought, and that made a huge difference.   A few big jack trevalleys joined the party as well.  Beach fishing from the house was cool too.  We caught all the triggers we wanted – delicous, and a few big Pacific Porgy.  The guys made fish tacos that were out of this world!  Lots of beer drinking, I kayaked a few shark baits out off the beach and had one pick up, but I don’t think it was a big enough fish to play ball.

One of the other amazing things about this place was how remote it is.  We took a one lane dirt road through the desert, along the mountains, at one point I was scared for my life driving on 1 lane, in a van, on a rocky road, with a 300 foot drop to the right.  We were on beautiful tropical beaches where you could literally look miles one way, and miles the other way, and not see a single person, house or piece of civilization.  Growing up in an American civilization, sometimes you forget that places like this even exist.  At times like this, it doesn’t even matter that the fishing wasn’t what it could have been.  But I will be back for the fishing, this place was just too amazing…