THE MADNESS CONTINUES...PV MEXICO 4/29

[Capt Josh]

When you get to the point that you pass out naked...wrapped in only a towel on the floor of your kid's room as you tuck them in at night...YOU MIGHT HAVE JUST GONE THROUGH SOME SPECTACULAR FISHING...and we sure as hell did...

The details of how i made it home last night from the marina are forever lost in limbo but somehow i managed to shuffle though the door...shower...and make it to my daughter's bed...the Sand Man took good care of me shortly thereafter and i woke up in a heap around 4am this morning on the floor but i know i must have been dreaming of good times and perhaps great fishing...because the puddle of drool on the floor traced a noticeable smile...

I haven't shaved in 4 or 5 days...i'm sunburnt as hell...cut up...dehydrated...famished...horny...but above all else...above all mere mortal nuisances...i have a firm and resonant HUMM happening deep inside my body...it is the sound of perfectly tuned MOJO...and i can hear a thousand tiny voices inside my head screaming...IT JUST DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS....

For the most part i was exhausted by the time i hit the boat yesterday morning...three hours of sleep rarely does the body good...but once those turbo's get cranking and the g-force kicks in as the Cabo 40 rockets to plane...chit man...screw the coffee...that is pure adrenaline right there...

I had notions of starting at the rock again...thinking wahoo this time...but as i drew near i decided to head back out to where we ended up the evening before...

Capt Herk on the Frantic Pace was already in the area...we'd tipped him off the night before and all but untied his boat for him...and he and the crew were already into the marlin with one release...Manny and i arrived and were in the fish as well immediately...

It was my turn to find the porpoise first and first pass through produced a triple hookup...not big fish but hey...one heck of a way to start the morning...

Brent and the boys were flying down there on the deck as Bopa and Comando produced fish after fish after fish for them...triple headers, doubles, even quadruples as we made pass after pass through the porpoise...tunas were crushing flying fish 360 degrees around the boat and it was all we could do to get a few lures up the riggers before they all started crashing down again...

Manny came over to join us as we peeled off on the marlin hunt again having quenched our thirst for tuna for the morning...and as soon as we pulled away 4 marlin come crashing through the spread...somehow the left long rigger line gets caught in the clip and once again the starboard rigger goes BOING...bending so far towards the water i thought FOR SURE it's going to snap but somehow the line pops free before something really bad happens...but we're left looking like a grasshopper with a seriously deformed antenna...what the hell...the fish don't care...

While the marlin did not bite all day yesterday like they did the day before the fishing was fast and furious and between Herk, Manny and i we conservatively raised 40 fish...although our hookup to release ratio was terrible...but hey...what can you do...

Somewhere between the tunas and the packs of marlin that would blitz the boat Brent nailed a massive dorado over 50#'s...but as the afternoon wore on i could tell the ledge was shutting down and it was time to vamanos for the rock...

We get to the rock and i decide to do one loop around in hopes of wahoo...which i decided not to fish in the morning...and sure enough...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ double header...we lose on on the maurader but the one on the green and black EAL sticks and we've got bacon wrapped wahoo in our future...i'm also left wondering just how good the grey light wahoo bite could be out there...

Anyway...at this point a small school of very large tunas decides to go ballistic on a school of skipjack...150 - 200# fish are knocking 5# skipjack through the air as detonation after detonation marks the end of the line for one skipjack after another...

I start screaming of course...as i am apt to do when monsters are about...and in NASCAR time we've got the kite out and start trolling skipbaits through the area...

BOOM...5 seconds in a 100#er rockets towards the bait from 10 feet away...SMACK...in his excitement the fish misses the mark...hitting the bait with his forehead and knocks the bait a further 10 feet through the air...SONOFA....SMASHWHOOSH...not to worry a 40#er has now beaten the bigger fish to the bait with more accuracy and is now screaming drag causing a frenzy of activity below on deck...

We spend the remaining hour and a half of the afternoon watching mid-sized tunas fight over themselves...flying out of the water trying in earnest to beat their bretheren to the coveted kite skip bait...goddamn that is just one hell of an unfair technique on those tunas...

I never did see another fish over 50#'s the rest of the afternoon although i know they were there...just likely full on skipjack...

Alls well that ends well they say and i'm pretty sure they were right...

"One more pass...." i call from the tower and as if on cue another tuna explodes on the bait, hooking himself and tearing drag all in one second and just like that the WHITE KNIGHT's two days of spectacular fishing came to an end...

With a few hundred pounds of tuna, wahoo, and dorado now hurdling at 30,000 feet towards Seattle...and about 500 photos to prove it...i seriously doubt those guys will forget this trip anytime soon...

That is...until they get back for another round in June...

So that's that...i'm off to Kona for Ron's wedding and some serious fishing...and back at it down here again fishing on the 10th of May...

So Manny, Juan, Herk, Danny, Kurt...keep em honest out there for me...

Adieu...

[LuckyLady]

AWESOME REPORT as always! Pretty work there captain!

[Capt Josh]

And ADMIN i promise to get this photo program fixed...

Thanks for helping out...

See everyone when i get back...

[Dave Sikorski]

Damn fine piece of work Josh.

Enjoy your trip and keep the great reports coming when you get back!

-D

[johnseafood]

Pretty work guysand the story fit it perfectly. I can remember nights leaving capemay after offshore all day and driving home only to wake up and not know how i made it home.

Theres also been nights were i woke up to people going to there boats at 5 a.m and i'm sound asleep in the truck.

Keep up the good work down there

[Captain Fred Archer]

Great fishing, no question. One problem that could wind up being a mighty expensive one.

Mexican sportfishing limits on kept tuna and dorado are 5 per boat, per day. You can catch as many as you like, but can only legally keep five of each for the boat.

For foreigners, fishing their waters is a privilege, not a right and I hope that all who fish there respect their laws, just as we expect them to respect ours. And, penalties are severe. Not worth taking chances, even if you disrespect their laws by accident.

A well-intentioned word of warning.

[LuckyDrew]

Cap, they've changed it up. Tuna are now 5 per angler, dorado 2 per, billfish 1 per, max 10 total per day per angler. 2 dodos count as 5 fish and 1 bill or shark counts as 5 fish. So 2 dodos and 5 tuna make a limit, just as 2 dodos and 1 bill would. Drew

[Captain Fred Archer]

Drew,

Thanks. Hadn't heard. Huge change. I hope that the new limits are being adhered to. Should cut down on the marlin killing, but the dorado limit is strange.

Sorry for getting it wrong.

[Capt Josh]

Great fishing, no question. One problem that could wind up being a mighty expensive one.

Mexican sportfishing limits on kept tuna and dorado are 5 per boat, per day. You can catch as many as you like, but can only legally keep five of each for the boat.

For foreigners, fishing their waters is a privilege, not a right and I hope that all who fish there respect their laws, just as we expect them to respect ours. And, penalties are severe. Not worth taking chances, even if you disrespect their laws by accident.

A well-intentioned word of warning.

Fred thanks for thinking of a possible nasty situation...and looking out for a fellow capt...

Believe me after living in mexico for the better part of the last 10 years between Baja and PV i've been known to bend the rules a time or two...sometimes innocently...others not...

Always enjoy reading your stuff...you think outside the box and i like that...

Keep it coming...

[Captain Fred Archer]

Josh,

Leave it to you to see the intent in my message. Glad to see that. In Cabo gringo owned and operated boats were subject to a lot of scrutiny as far as any and all laws were concerned. That was okay with me, because like I'm sure you do, we went out of our way to stay within the local laws. Live there and work with and get to know the Mexican people - I mean the common ones like the fishermen and others - and you, or me at least and obviously you too, come to understand what good, kind, friendly folk they are. We should be the last ones to break their laws.

Even under the old "five of several gamefish per boat" limits, we used to come in with a lot more fish than our charters could use. The vast majority of those fish, including the wahoos that we used to specialize in catching, went to a large number of locals gratis.

As you know, I am primarily a troller who couldn't hold a candle to you guys who really have that bait game down pat when I tried to do it your way. I usually trolled an eight lure spread and after a lot of years of experimenting and learning, the day came when getting covered by tuna was more the rule than the exception...we called that, "El Ocho Grande" and the Pandemonium caused by eight tunas on at once, even if they were thirty pounders, was a blast and a half for both crew and customers. If it was the cows, and we used to catch our share, a single "ocho" could go on for hours.

I am also a spreaderbar head and all eight lures were bars, so every "Ocho" was a bunch of surface strikes that you had to see to believe! Talk about screaming and yelling and running around...even by the customers and crew (not me...no, no, not me - LOL! "Watch out! There's a gorilla loose in the tower!")

Back in the day a more generous tuna limit would have been welcomed by us. We often had to start releasing tunas as of the first stop and after that, all others, unless we were able to do what we always tried to; get our customers to settle for taking one big one (80-whatever) and releasing everything else. My boys and this old codger himself had to learn how to release tunas fast and clean and as you know, you can take a beating doing that over and over again. That's how we got started running circle hooks on our bars and soon after that, removing the barbs. I honestly don't think that we ever lost a fish because of the no barbs and in fact, I'm sure that our landing percentage went up because we never pulled a C-hook, like we did with the J's.

Frankly, I am surprised that Mexico has in effect dramatically increased the limits on game fish thru the simple expedient of making "per boat", "per angler". And I find them limiting dorado so radically after allowing what I understand is a huge, nearshore longline industry that targets them downright criminal. Markets up here and I understand elsewhere are loaded with dorado labeled "caught in Mexico" and prices have gone thru the roof. I sure hate to see all of that commercial pressure on such a popular sportfishing species.

I'm waiting for that "Cow of all Cows" to come from one of you PV hotshots. I ran my boat there many years ago, before it was really known as a hot fishing location. We fished there for a month and it was unbelievable! Much like Cabo in the old days. I almost stayed, but at the time there wouldn't have been enough business to keep a gringo charterboat alive.

Now that you guys have opened it up, take care of all of those fish down there, so it stays awesome. And if you see an old guy wandering the docks with a couple of black Labs, it'll be me, come to see the new generation of truly professional charter captains. The Old Guard is changing and the future depends on you young guys who are learning and catching and putting the boots to those big ones.

Keep catch'in 'em up, kiddo!