PHOTO 1: Yellowtail like this show up in the spring in the Sea of Cortez


PHOTO 2: This is off Cerralvo Island. It's the kind of trophy type yellows the Sea of Cortez is known for.

YELLOWTAIL I.Q.

Originally published in Western Outdoor News the week of April 3, 2008

I think it’s called “repetitive learning.” With apologies to all you educators out there, it’s the idea that the best way to learn something is repeat the same action over and over. Eating with chopsticks Learning a language. How to play an instrument. And yes…fishing.

When you get to see and chase a fish day-after-day it helps to hone your craft. For example, I used to advise anglers that by going out on a single over night trip out’ve San Diego for tuna for 5 years probably isn’t going to make them a better tuna fisherman. Time (and money) ultimately is better spent on one FIVE day trip where your learning curve will accelerate.

You have the opportunity to learn from mistakes and still get in on the next bite. You get to try tricks and methods you would not normally get to try on a single venture where the bite could be over by the time you realize you have the wrong hook size and it’s time to go home. Too bad. So sad. Thank you for riding. See you next year.


Where I have my fleet here in La Paz, we’re not really a yellowtail fishery. When folks want to really catch a yellowtail in Baja, I refer them up north to places like Mulege, Santa Rosalia, Loreto or Bay of Los Angeles, where the waters run cooler and the back of those big homeguard fish run deep emerald green!

Down further south where we are, our bread-and-butter fish are the dorado, tuna, billfish, etc. We get our share of yellowtail, but nothing like they get to the north. You sure don’t hear about many yellowtail even further south of us on the East Cape or Cabo.

So, although I think I’m pretty above-average on the bluewater species, I’m not bad on yellowtail, but understandably there’s room for improvement and believe me, I’ve caught my share of the big forktails.


Well, we’ve actually had an incredible yellowtail bite here for about the last two months. Fish are deep. They are in the middle of the water column. They are foaming and crashing on the surface with birds diving on them like the tales you read about from Ray Cannon or your grandfather told you about. You just don’t see things like that very often. Or at all. Tuna boil. Dorado boil. You don’t see many yellowtail boils these days.

One things for sure, yellowtail are members of the jack family (amberjack, pompano, jack crevalle, big eye jacks, roosterfish, etc.) and any fish with that pedigree is a natural fighter. Like any one with the last name of Monzano must make a mean spaghetti sauce. The guy named Lee in the action film is the martial arts master.

When yellowtail fight, all have that burst of bruising energy to want to take it down and deep right back to the cover from where they came. Whether that be some weed patch; some rocky pinnacle or some wreck. That’s where they want to go and your new two-speed be damned.

So the deeper you fish them, the greater the chance they are already half-way home to cover. It might be rare, but getting them on the surface or higher in the water column increases your chances of success. The problem with yellowtail is that they don’t often give you the level playing field. Everything is in their favor and they like to play below the surface.

So, let me pass on a few things I’ve learned over the last few weeks of yellowtail fishing that I had not known before. Some completely stunned me.

My best yellowtail lure, when they would hit a lure, would be a slow trolled crank-bait like a big Bomber, Rapala, Yozuri or similar. I have found that making a commotion on the water like with a spreader bar of small hoohies or even daisy-chained hoohies will get them up and hitting. They will even hit a fast skipped rubber swim bait. The bigger the swimmer, the harder the strike.

I grew up always thinking that yellowtail will only hit the fastet-jigged lure. It was “yellowtail catechism” that you cranked your iron as hard and as fast until your arms came off the socket to get a yellowtail interested. It’s like getting a cat interested in chasing a ball of yarn. Roll fast and kitty chases!

Instead on several occasions, the slow-retrieve lure with the big wiggle has outfished the ultra-retrieve yo-yo iron. My arms actually were falling out of the sockets and I’m getting old so I slowed down. WHAM! Hook –up!

I also experienced that a slow-trolled bait below the surface works better than a lure. Nose hook the bait. About 3 feet ahead, actually tie a torpedo sinker to the line using a smaller diameter line like say 10 pound test. It’s almost like a dropper loop except trolled. A 2 to 4 oz sinker is about right to keep the bait just below the surface a few feet. A simple overhand knot on the sinker is enough to keep the sinker while trolling, but quickly breaks off after a strike.

Over the years, I have found green line outfishes other colors close to shore, but fluorocarbon leaders outfish green line. But they break off more fish. It’s a trade off. I’d rather get bit.

Just my opinion and some observations. I’m fishing tomorrow and all of this could be completely wrong…again! That’s fishing for you. Just when I feel confident… all this could change. It's what makes it fun!

That’s my story. If you ever want to reach me, my e-mail is riplipboy@aol.com

FORWARD THROUGH A REAR VIEW MIRROR

Published originally in Western Outdoor News the week of March 17, 2007


The great radio journalist Paul Harvey once wrote a piece about dirt roads. With apologies to him if I paraphrase and dig out parts from memory, he wrote that people were just different when they were on, near or lived near dirt roads.

He said values were different before the dirt was paved. Back in the day, dirt roads taught you that despite the teeth jarring, mud and dirt, life could be a little bumpy. But everything would be OK if at the end of the road, there was either a warm home, a dog, a fishing hole or some place to fish.

There was no street crime before the road was paved. Drive by shootings? I don’t think so.

Dirt roads taught you patience. No one tailgated. You could only go as fast as you could go and you took the time to look at things around you and see where you were.

You got closer to your family, friends and neighbors because of that dirt road. You didn’t just zip to the movies or store. You talked. You actually conversed. You depended on each other.

Early on when I first started running our fishing biz, I wore many hats, metaphorically speaking. We all did. We all still do. When dollars/ pesos are short and you don’t have a staff, you do what needs to be done.

So, back in the day, I cleaned boats; made breakfasts and lunches; cleaned the fishing gear and washed wetsuits. I sharpened the hooks. I fixed flat tires. I made beds. And many times, I drove. And I drove.

I would drive our anglers down 10 miles of Baja road twice and sometimes four times a day down to the beach where our pangas waited. All their gear, ice chests and bags stuffed and packed as well as could be.

But let me tell you about that dirt road.

It was the archetype of Baja roads. It suddenly appeared at the end of the pavement. It just started and off it went. There was nothing gradual or subtle about the way it started or how it treated you along the way. It could be brutal.

In some spots it was little more than a one-laned burro path where a four-wheeler would be better suited. Mini-arroyos (gullies) marked the way and pockmarks were the rule rather the exception. Sandy in some spots, but more often rutted with kidney rattling washboards, the road ate tires, rims and suspensions on a regular basis. We had running jokes about nuts, bolts and screws that simply shook loose from places we didn’t know had nuts and bolts!

The abandoned carcasses of other unfortunate vehicles cannibalized for parts and left to oxidize in the Baja sun could often be seen among the arid parched cactus groves covering the route as far as the eye could see. Emaciated cattle, horses and burros, those icons of the Baja desert, were as much a part of the road as the heat that would sometimes rise off the road in waves.

And there was no escape from the dust. From start to stop we choked on the dust and heat. Our vans had air-conditioning only because we drove fast with the windows down!

And we jolted and careened and bitched about it. More often than not we laughed along the way; sang with the radio; told lots of bad jokes and there was always one guy in the back who ate too many frijoles that made everyone’s eyes burn or roar with hilarity. In the rearview mirror, he was always the guy I could see grinning.

In the mornings, there was always the excitement and anticipation of what the day would bring. On the way back, there was more laughter and stories and lies to be told of big ones that got away.

Four family guys, pals since high school, ribbed each other with locker room humor. Dads would sit a little taller talking about their kid’s first catch. Junior would beam. A retired couple joined the conversation with fish stories from “before Cabo had a marina.”

An older father and son would sit back in their chairs and listen to the stories and clink two cold beer bottles together. They nod and smile and savor a special day that had nothing to do with the fishing. And a bunch of dusty, sweaty strangers crammed into that van were now making plans for tacos and beer together that evening.

And one day they started to pave my dirt road.

The first “installment” was a huge chunk. In each successive season, the asphalt creeps closer and closer to the beach. Now only about 200 yards remain to the waterline.

And with each successive encroachment of highway, I see the telephone poles moving along side. Some areas have street lights. Say it ain’t so!

There’s a real estate sign. Someone is laying a foundation with cinder block. Barbed-wire fencing along much of the way now prevents me from accidentally warndering onto someone’s “Baja Estate.” And our vans are now air-conditioned and hermetically-sealed.

I miss that old road. I miss the Baja dust. We bonded and made some of our best friends on that dirt road to the fishing grounds “back in the day.”


That’s my story. If you ever want to reach me, my e-mail is riplipboy@aol.com.

PHOTO 1: This is what the Baja is about and we often take it for granted!

PHOTO 2: This is what it's about too. Big spaces and quiet time.

PHOTO 3: And from those of us on this side of the counter, we're blessed that we get to share the enthusiasm and invite our friends to come play!

WELCOME TO THE BIG SANDBOX!



Published in Western Outdoor News the Week of March 5, 2008

Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, we’ll be in our booth at the Long Beach Fred Hall Fishing and Boating Show. It’s at the Long Beach Convention Center March 5-9. We’re not in the WON booth so don’t look for us there! We’re in our own booth in our usual spot on tackle row next to the Izorline, Accurate Reels and Calstar booths. Hope to see you!

We’ve been on the road now for 2 months hitting San Mateo, Sacramento, Denver, Portland and most recently, Monroe (just outside of Seattle). This is the first time in months I’ve had an opportunity to see copies of WON and read all the e-mails.

Amigos, thanks for the support and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed reading my ramblings for almost 4 years now. This was supposed to be a temporary gig until Pat could find someone else and it turned into a pleasant several years of you allowing me to spill my Baja on these pages. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to follow such grand footsteps and Gene Kira, and Fred Hoctor and Ray Cannon.

And now, my amigo, Gary Graham graces the pages. Gary rocks. He’s an IGFA record holder, a member of the Outdoor Writer’s Hall of Fame, and has forgotten more about Baja than I’ll ever know! You’ll enjoy him and his style and he has the ability to do a lot more hardcore reporting and roaming that I’m not able to do from my operations in La Paz. I’m honored to share the space with Gary and I appreciate my amigo and editor, Pat McDonell for supporting my writing all this time.

I’m getting a lot of e-mails from readers surprised to find out that I own and run a fishing operation in La Paz. Yup. That’s what I do. . .365-days-a-year. However, other than to use it as a context for a column or story, I never wanted to pimp ourselves on these pages. I never once told you to come fishing with us and probably mentioned competitors more than our own operation. I felt if I mentioned our operation, it would ruin our journalistic credibility in the column. I didn’t even advertise in the paper.

Anyway, you haven’t heard the last of me and, I’m sure Gary will be roaming the aisles at the show so you should go up and say howdy to him if you see him. He’ll probably be with his lovely wife Yvonne who has a fishing resume a mile long herself.

I’ve been doing these outdoor fishing and hunting shows now for over 20 years and if you’ve never been to something like the Fred Hall Fishing and Boating Show, you really owe it to yourself to come down.

Old Baja veterans, you can just tune out the rest of this, but in doing these shows all over the country, I am still amazed at how many folks really don’t know Baja or even realizes what it is and that it even exists. Especially if you live in Southern California or any of the American Southwest, you just take Mexico for granted. Baja and the concept of just “running across the border” is so much a part of our consciousness that we don’t think twice about what it is and what it has meant to us and is becoming.

But, run out to Denver or Seattle or talk to some Canadian folks or even folks in the San Francisco Bay area and “the Baja” is often an alien concept. Isn’t that the place were there are banditos and dark seedy bars? Isn’t that where everyone lives in shacks or time shares? You can fish there?

More than once, I’ve drawn blank stares when talking to folks about it in my booth. More than once, I’ve been asked questions like:

“Baja California is part of Mexico? I’ve been trying to find it on map of California!”

“If is really a part of Mexico, how come it’s called ‘Baja CALIFORNIA?”

“How can that long strip of land be part of Mexico when it’s not attached to Mexico?”

“Do they speak Spanish in Baja like the people in Mexico or do they speak Californian?”

You get the idea. Remember how fun it is to take kids to Disneyland the first time and watching their eyes go wide? That’s what it’s like turning new folks onto the Baja we take for granted.

They can’t believe there is a place where you can actually see the sunrise and the sunset over the ocean…on the same day. Or that all of Mexico is not like Tijuana and that white sand beaches, blue water and rolling deserts and mountains await. It’s hard to explain to them water that’s 80 or 90 degrees and Baja “formal wear” is a t-shirt under your Hawaiian shirt.

You tell them about what a giant fish boil looks like at sunrise with tuna or dorado ripping the surface chasing every bait in the ocean or and birds diving as well; or schools of dolphin as far as the eye can see; turtles swimming on the reef and grey whales playfully bumping the pangas.

And you tell them about the evenings when the sun decorates and re-paints frescoed skies every 5 minutes with a palette of purples and orange and fuschia and the aroma of sizzling carne asada and chiles wafting over the beaches. Lights begin to dot the shoreline interrupted only by the plop and hiss of another icy cerveza being opened and poured. Laughter drifts up from the somewhere down the beach and someone’s car radio plays a barely audible rancho tune that carries across the water.

We do these shows and take it for granted that everyone already KNOWS about the Baja, but so many are still just discovering it. And for those of us who get to be on the other side of those counters or who are blessed to get to write about it, it makes the Baja all that much more special. We get to tell new friends about our special sandbox just across the border and invite them to all come play. It’s fun to watch the lights come on!

See ya this week in Long Beach!



That’s my story. If you ever want to reach me, my e-mail is riplipboy@aol.com.