ORDER IN THE COURT! I SWEAR I DIDN'T DO IT!

Originally published in Western Outdoor News the week of June 25, 2008


I have a friend down here in Baja who’s family is in a rough patch right now. Actually, it’s not a good place at all.

Put yourself in the place of being the single parent of an 8-year-old. You work 3 jobs trying to make ends meet. But for part of the afternoon for 2 hours, no one is there to watch your kid. It’s been like this for years. It’s reality. No one likes it, but for those two hours there’s no supervision. No other nearby family members or neighbors to help out.

You live in a little studio above a garage. Not in the best neighborhood. A lot of trash and debris around. A fire starts in a wood pile where the landlord keeps flammable lubricants. Much of the building is burned. The child has to be rescued from the upstairs by neighbors. Everyone is thankful.

Until the next day. The police arrive and the child is charged with arson. The child claims to have been taking a nap as always. There are no other witnesses. But the child is now being prosecuted and could face full criminal penalties including removal from the family.

A nightmare of almost insurmountable proportions. There are no witnesses and only the child’s words of denial. What do you do as a parent? You can’t afford lawyers.

And this is Mexico. This is not the U.S.

You see, Mexico adheres to the archaic Napoleonic code of law, residue from when the French controlled Mexico. Unlike the U.S. where you are “innocent until proven guilty”, in Mexico, you are “guilty until you prove you are innocent.”

Let that sink in a bit.

Ever tried to prove a negative? Remember being a kid and trying to prove you did not kick the dog? Prove you did not make your baby sister cry? Prove it was your classmate in line who was giggling? If the authority figure said you were the culprit there wasn’t much diddly-squat you could do or say.

Fast forward to adulthood in Mexico. It can be pretty ominous. Prove you did NOT run the stoplight. Prove you were NOT drunk in public. Prove your kid did NOT start a fire that resulted in thousands of dollars of damage. Talk to the hand, Senor!
The Mexican legal system, with all its resources, doesn’t have to do a thing. It doesn’t have to prove you’re guilty. It’s incumbent upon you, even if you’re the poorest of the poor, to prove your innocence. You are already guilty because the legal system says you’re the most likely bad guy. Wrong place. Wrong time. Too bad. So sad.

Americans accidentally caught up on the wrong side of the Mexican legal system are rudely awakened…a traffic accident…a bit of “someone else’s” pot found in your car…a stupid macho bar fight…and it’s YOUR word against “the system.” Right or wrong, you’re a guest in a foreign country and are subject to the perception that you’re guilty right out of the box. To Americans that’s a scary concept that makes you wish you were in the land of Judge Judy with all it’s flaws.

Well, Mexico is about to change.

In perhaps the most sweeping legal reforms ever, Mexico is coming over from the dark side. Within the next few years, new legislative measures will be implemented that will turn the Mexican legal system on it’s cabeza (head).

Not only will the Mexican courts now start the ball rolling with a PRESUMPTION of innocence, but there will actually be open courtrooms and public trials.

As a former trial attorney myself, this is huge. I was once involved in litigation more than a dozen years ago where I was hired to work with Mexican attorneys to recover some foreclosed property worth several million dollars.

There was no trial. There was no hearing. There were no witnesses. There were no oral arguments. We never saw a judge. We never got to see the “evidence” presented by the opposing side. Everyone simply submitted papers to the judge. There was no way to know if the other side’s written evidence was true or not. There was no opportunity to challenge it. It could have been a pack of lies written on paper plates for all we knew. As I found out later, our Mexican attorneys also fabricated much of the paperwork. I was told, “The object is to win!” But that was how the system worked. I could only shake my head.

So now the Mexican legal system faces the daunting task of building courtrooms for public hearings. It now has to actually educate judges, lawyers and paralegals about trials and evidentiary matters. These are alien concepts. Remember, this is not a culture that grew up watching “Perry Mason,” “L.A. Law” or “People’s Court.”

It comes too late to help my friend and his family, but it’s a good step in the right direction for once.


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

PHOTO: The appearance of wahoo are usually a pretty good indication of warmer waters.

YOU'RE GETTING WARMER...OR NOT!

Originally Published the Week of June 10, 2008 in Western Outdoor News

This time of year fishing in the Baja is what I call the “transition time.” Although the air temperatures might convince many that it’s already summer, the water aspects of this place tell a different story.

Whereas, many spots, especially here in Southern Baja are already hitting the 90’s and low 100’s inshore, if you stick your toes into the water, you might still get a chill that would make you think twice.

If you were on a fishing craft with electronics or even just through observation, a day on the water might reveal various divergent levels of water temperatures both horizontally as you travel from point A to point B. For example, near the beach it’s 81 degrees. A quarter mile off in seemingly similar water, it’s 72.

Additionally, you might also measure different temperature gradients vertically as well. You might find 80 degree water on the surface, but a mere 30 feet down, hit a thermocline where waters drop to a bracing 65.

It’s not uncommon. In one spot, you could be over ultramarine blue waters that promise dorado or billfish, but several hundred yards away, the waters look and feel like cold green pea soup. Or, in the alternative, the green murky water could be the result of waters that have become warm enough for a plankton/algae bloom to explode where the growth of the organisms clouds the water to near zero visibility. It will stay so until the waters continue to warm and eventually kill the growth in the natural cycle.

The point being is that nothing is stable. It’s not really quite summer. It’s not quite spring and and surprisingly, in some ways, the waters still reflect even winter-like conditions on some level.

So, you come down all fired-up and tricked-out with your marlin rigs and while billfish are there, they won’t give you a sniff. Or, you find lots of sargasso weed that should be holding dorado and all your trolling lures hook are gobs of the grass!

Conversely, your target is pargo or cabrilla, but now your captain says it’s “tan calor.” (so warm) or “Hay tan mucho viento” (too much wind) and you thought all that was done with this late in the year.

My general advice to anglers who ask me is to be flexible. Don’t set your crosshairs on one particular species or style of fishing. Just because the wahoo were always there every June, doesn’t mean they’ll be there again. Just because the roosters are biting off Los Barriles doesn’t mean they’ll be hitting in Mulege or Loreto. Fish for what’s there, not for what’s not.

Water temps are important. I like to keep a small water thermometer with me. It’s not very sophisticated, but I can drag it or lower it to get some idea of what’s around me. It makes no point to fish in waters that are 65 degrees no matter how good it looks if the species I’m hunting usually wants 75 degree water.

Services like http://www.terrafin.com/ are invaluable as well to track where warm and cold water patches are moving. Waters change with currents and upwellings, tides and winds. Today’s 80 degree patch could be tomorrow’s 70 degree green zone.

It’s not only important for the purposes of finding game fish, but think about bait! Gamefish eat. They follow their stomachs like you and me. Find the bait and it helps locate your quarry. If mackerel, sardines or caballito require a certain type of water, then seek that water to find fish or at least use water temps to find bait for your tanks.

One thing I do pay more attention to as well is the length of time a certain patch of water is at a certain temperature. Changing water temperatures seem to affect the bite as much as anything.

I have worked waters where say, marlin, charged the boat en masse and with complete abandon going after anything thrown in the water. Then, the waters go up or down by a degree or two. Suddenly, you can see dozens of marlin and it’s like your boat and baits developed some kind of stink. They won’t give you a sniff and you can almost run over them until they swim away.

To me, it’s a bit like when you win a goldfish for your kid at the church fiesta. You bring it home in a plastic bag and let it sit in the bag bobbing in your aquarium until it gets acclimated to the water change.

Same thing with fish. They need to get acclimated. Pay attention to those temperature changes and you’ll help our hook up success.


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