Back from Baja

[SoCalAngler]

Got back from Baja a few weeks ago and had a great time. Caught many of these,


several of these,


and a handful of these.


I did some land based fishing which up until this trip I had done very little of. I guy I never met before snapped these pics of me when he launched his kayak by where I was fishing and emailed them to me.



Took one of the quads to fish a area just north of where my father lives.


Fished for a half hour for these two Cabrilla before the Trigger fish woke up and started eating all my plastics.

[alantani]

i don't have much interest in sails, but i love dorado!!!!!! 

[redsetta]

Wow - great work mate.
Those dorado/mahi mahi are beasts!
Looks like a whole lot of fun.
Cheers for sharing, Justin

[Dr. Jekyll - AKA MeL B]

those dorados look tasty , thanks for sharing!

[conchydong]

Those sure are some slob dolphin. Did you get them all on the troll or were you able to bait them off a paddy or some type of flotsam?
Being able to catch Cabrilla, or any type of grouper, from the shore is also a nice bonus.
Congratulations on a great trip

[LTM]

Hey SoCal,

Looks like you had a great time (that quad-runner is the way to cover a beach), and your smile on the last pix says it all.  God-willing, I look forward to doing some fishing with you.

Leo

[Steve-O]

Delicious Fishes!!!

Nice sized bull mahi. Love the scenery shot with the quad in it.

Steve-o

[SoCalAngler]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Let me answer a couple of questions.

conchydong, I fished off shore on this trip for three days and almost all of the Dorado were caught on bait. This first pic was after our first day fishing which was epic, almost unbelievable. We get to the area we wanted to start to look around at about 7:15. We find a few small patties (sargasso) in the area and stop on one about the size of a trash can lid with a single bird sitting on it. I toss out a bait and in afew minutes I'm bit with the right kind. The first time I get the fish to the boat I see a follower with the hooked fish so my pops chucks out a bait and bam he on too. The second time I get the fish close I look down into the water and I'm amazed to see around 100 Dorado swimming by. Two more baits in the water and we have 4 hookups going on. Long story short we keep 6 fish release another 8-10, 25-35 lb fish after we called in others to fish this bite. We had 8 boats fishing this bite and we were done by 8:30 off to look at something else. We left 2 fish shy of our limit just in case we caught some really BIG Dorado. We did not catch any larger Dorado other than a 40 lber my dad caught but we had plenty, no need to be greedy. Not one troll fish on this day because we never put out the trolling setups.

Alan, Billfish are mostly by catch for us but on this day we decided we wanted to pull on a few more fish and because sometimes the BIG bulls swim with them, off we went. We cruise around 5 miles and see birds working. As we pull to them we see 4-5 billfish puddling around. Two baits thrown out and double hookups with both fish released. We run maybe 200 yards to the second set of birds and it is the same thing. We keep this up until we can no longer pull on another fish. We release around 10 billfish which was a mixture of sails and stripes, that was about 2 sails to every striped marlin. All this and were back at the house by 12 noon.

My father lives 17 miles south of Loreto at Puerto Escondido and they do get some Big bulls there but I have yet to catch a monster. This pic is my avatar and is my biggest to date which I caught 2 years ago.

[redsetta]

All this and were back at the house by 12 noon.

Nicely done - what a day!
Mexico's great - my two brothers spent the past few weeks surfing on the family farm in BCS, then down through Sinaloa and further south.
Haven't been back since 1996 meself, but it's only a matter of time
Cheers, Justin

[Dominick]

Hey SoCal:  I told you to stay away from my girlfriend.    Dominick

[broadway]

Hey Dominick,

      She can't be your girl, she didn't pull the hair out of her head yet
SoCal,
      Nice, fishy trip!
Dom