Reel Repair by Alan Tani

We had so much fun on the Success last year out of San Carlos/Mag bay that I've booked another trip this year. We've got 2 open spots and would love to get some fresh faces in the group! The trip is really incredible for people who don't like boat rides or crowds. We get to fish the Ridge (absolutely phenomenal yellowfin/yellowtail fishing past several years) while taking absolutely zero boat rides while the sun is up. Capt. Cary and the crew are incredible and with only 6 people on a 60 foot boat, there's enough rail space for everyone! Bunks are nice and roomy.

We would be looking at $4700 per person for the 4.5 day trip (includes van, fuel surcharge, 50 lbs sealed fish, and tip). Only additional items would be fish cutting past 50 lbs ($1.75 per lb fish vacuum sealed) and panga fishing if weather is bad (probably $120 per person per day)

Itinerary:

Tues Nov 11th: Land in Loreto (flights from LAX,PHX,TIJ with connections). Van to San Carlos (3 hours). See sights of Baja! Board Success via Panga/Dock as tides permit. Dinner on boat 1st night. Depart for fishing grounds to arrive daylight wednesday.

Wed-Sat: Fish all day! We will hit all sorts of spots for marlin, tuna, wahoo, grouper, yellowtail - whatever wants to bite!!

Sunday morning: back to the dock at San Carlos with processed fish. Van to Loreto (3 hrs) and lunch/flight home.

We may fish the mangroves from a panga if the weather chases us off the ridge. Good option for a bad weather day, but we prefer to fish offshore if possible.

We usually bring a literal handful of tackle (a trolling lure, 2 wahoo bombs/surface iron/yoyos) but the boat supplies the vast majority of terminal tackle, rod, reels. Capt. Cary will be happy to bring down (and back!) things from San Diego when he leaves mid-october if you're local to SoCal. If not, we do just fine with bringing nothing but the clothes you'll wear.

Here's the boats website for those looking for more details:

https://successsportfishing.com/boat-specs/

Report from last year!

https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,37997.0.html

Let me know if your going to go in 2026 as on a 10 day trip during the time your going this year.

Yes we will definitley (barring any earth-shattering changes) be heading back in 2026. The dates fluctuate a little bit with flight schedules but we will be in roughly the same week at roughly the same time

Got back last night from this year's Mag Bay trip. This year it was Ryan, Ron, me, Ryan's friend Joe, and two of Ron's family friends Jim and Luigi. Eric had to bow out at the last minute for health reasons, so Joe, who runs a rockfish/lingcod sportfishing charter in Garibaldi, Oregon, took his place. We signed up for 4 days of fishing this year after two of last year's three days were limited by excessive wind and chop. This year the weather was fantastic all four days, and the fishing was good enough that we all had our limits of keepers after three days and so we played around on day 4 targeting non-keeper species.

We all descended on the airport in Loreto, BCS last Tuesday (11/11) in the early afternoon and were whisked by van to San Carlos on the Pacific side of the peninsula. But not before a great taco/torta late lunch that Ryan treated us to in Ciudad Insurgentes along the way. We met Cary, Nate, Geoff, and Loren of the 60 ft Success at the docks in San Carlos at the head of Mag Bay in the late afternoon, and were soon on our way. After a calm dinner on the bay of wahoo tacos, we set up for a couple of hours of making bait. It was scratch fishing for the little mackerels, but we finally hit our quota and made for the mouth of the bay.

The next morning we headed out in calm seas, light winds, and 80F temperature to the banks SE of Mag Bay for some morning striped marlin fishing. When everyone had pulled on enough marlin (all C&R), we put out the nomads and trolled the area for wahoo. An afternoon of motoring around only yielded three wahoo, but they were good sized (35-55 lbs). We got a few hits on bait and bombs, but couldn't get any of them to stick.

That night we headed north to what Cary the captain called the "southern banks" for another day of wahoo fishing. By 2pm that day the six of us had brought in two dozen good sized wahoo on the nomads, bombs, and bait. Almost all the fish were in the 40-60 lbs range, and everyone was in on the action. Having satisfied ourselves on the wahoo, we decided to looking for a kelp paddy to see if we could find a school of dorado. By 3:30 we found a nice big kelp, and for the next hour we pulled in our limits of schoolie dorado and then continued to C&R until we were almost out of energy and hooks!

That did it for the day, and so after dinner we headed north to the "northern banks" in search of tuna. After spending a calm night anchored at one of the highs, we started fishing bait at first light. We brought in a few small yellowfins, and the yoyo-ers found a few small yellowtails, but the fishing was slow. So we decided to troll around the high spots in search of a school or two of tuna. Several hours of trolling yielded nothing at all, so in mid-afternoon we headed back to our morning spot to see if the tuna had woken up. They had. We spent a few hours on a wide-open bite of small yellowfins, only stopping when it was getting dark and we had reached our fill. By that point we had enough fish for everyone to take home all the filets that they wanted (the fish are processed and frozen daily on the boat, so we know roughly how much weight of each species we have, day by day).

Since we were full up on filets, we decided for our last day to motor back to the marlin grounds for more wrist, bicep, shoulder, and back exercise. After making more mackerels in the middle of the night, we headed back south to the marlin banks. From dawn to about 10:30am there were probably only 15 minutes total when we weren't fighting at least one marlin, and only a half hour without at least a double hook-up. It was exhausting, as the marlin were mostly in the 100-150 lb range. There were a few wahoo and even a big bull dorado in the mix too. When we were all thoroughly exhausted, we motored down to the southern entrance to Mag Bay to try some light gear fishing in shallow water. We made a few drifts and scared up a few odd fish (whitefish, jack crevalle, cabrilla, pargo, needlefish) but we didn't find much. We then reset and anchored to see if we could find any of the medium sized yellowtail that some divers had told us about. We didn't find the yellowtails, but we did find a decent bite of good sized sierra mackerel on surface irons. After about a dozen and a half of those, it was getting to be later in the afternoon and we had some motoring to do to get back inside the bay. So we pulled the anchor and called it a trip. After another great dinner in the bay, Captain Cary had other ideas, and so we spent another couple of hours making (scratching) mackerels inside the bay (for the next group coming out the next day).

Following another calm night on the bay, we motored back to the port of San Carlos and unloaded our gear, fish, and selves at 7am. We then vanpooled back to Loreto with our driver Mario where two of us caught a noon flight, and the rest went out for huevos rancheros and fresh squeezed orange juice. We then returned to the aeropuerto for our later flight.

Overall for me this was an epic trip! Great weather, good fishing, lots of wahoo (I've never caught more than 1-2 wahoo on a trip before...this time I caught 6), good company, and only 5 nights aboard ship for all the fishing (and catching) we could want! I guess the only disappointments for me on this trip were the lack of yellowtails, the fact that my brother couldn't come along, and that the total alcohol consumption was 3 six-packs of cerveza and two bottles of wine. Damn, we left several cases of beer in that cooler! I'll bet Eric might have helped us with that one!!

Photos to come...

Dude that sounds like a great trip. Checked just about all the boxes.

Thanks for the write up, fun trip!

Photos

Awesome! We saw the Success out there when we were on the SOA!

i think we saw you guys out on the water!!!

The LRF dont pull aside eachother anymore and throw water balloons?

lame

Glad to hear we bumped into you guys out there! We sure did have a great trip, many thanks to all for making it happen. Had some tasty poke this week and already looking forward to next year!

Thanks to rich for writing the report, as usual I took zero pictures.