Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
March 2010
Flew into PV Sunday with my two younger brothers. After a ridiculous 2 hour wait in line to get through immigration we got to Customs where all the beef jerkey I bought at Fred Hall got confiscated. Not a great start, but it would take more than that to dampen our spirits. We were met by Dave Sanders and his wife Barbara at the airport and they drove us 3 hours to Tepic where we stayed the night at a comfortable hotel. Dave and Barbara are from Oregon but spend much of their time helping out at an orphanage in Tepic. The fishing business is supposed to help fund those endeavors.
Day 1
Got picked up at around 6 and taken on a 1 hour drive to Agua Milpa Lake. We then met our guide Rene and headed over to the camp to deposit our stuff. Dave and his wife have purchase a beautiful piece of property on the lake that is only accessible by boat. It has a palapa with hammocks and a bathroom with a hot water shower. It's perched on a hill with a great view of the lake and is closer to the good fishing spots than the other lodges near the dam. We started fishing around 8 and I got a bass on my first cast with a watermelon senko. That looked like a good sign but fishing was a little slow until we switched to small Fat Free Shad crankbaits in citrus color. After that we started whacking the bass pretty consistently. Neither of my brothers do much fishing but they were doing pretty well once they got the casting down. I finished the day with 47 bass and we had a total of 100 for the boat. Rene thoughtfully stayed out until we caught the 100th fish. The fish averaged about a pound with my brother Andrew getting the largest of around 4.5lbs. That night we slept on cots under the palapa, which was pretty comfortable.
Day 2
We started the day out a little earlier but didn't have much luck until around 10 on the crankbaits. I think we could have nailed some drop shotting in the morning but I cleverly forgot my dropshot tackle back at camp. After about 10 the fish started hitting the crankbaits pretty well again. I also got around 15 on a watermelon lizard. In total I finished with 42 and we got 86 for the boat. My brother Andrew again got the biggest fish at around 6.5lbs. We stopped fishing early around 230 so we could eat and then start the long drive to Punta Mita.
In summary, I think Fishin Mission Adventures (www.fishinmissionadventures.com) has a nice operation going. The level of service was high, the food was very good, and our guide was very good. The fishery is fantastic for numbers and a good place if you want to catch numbers of fish. It would be especially good for kids. If you are after lunkers this is probably not your place, although I'm sure there are some big fish in there.
Day 3
I had scheduled fishing with Kurt Hjort of Esperanza Sportfishing but when I talked to him the night before he said his boat was out of commission so he set us up with a guy named Balta. Balta was a nice enough guy, but I wasn't real impressed with him as a guide. The day didn't start out great because he headed out with the wrong group of anglers and left us waiting at the dock. We had to get another boat to pick us up and drive us to where he was fishing so we could switch onto his boat. He got some caballitos for bait but made no attempt to get any other types of bait which proved key on our other days. His tackle was very lacking and he appeared to not even have many hooks. We slow trolled the caballitos all day for one small bonita. No one else seemed to really be whacking them that day, but it seemed like we did worse than most. Perhaps sensing that his tip would be underwhelming, he decided to tack on a charge for bait which was never discussed. Again, seemed like a nice guy and I'm sure he catches fish when they are on but he didn't seem to have a deep bag of tricks for when they aren't.
Day 4
Having learned our lesson we booked with a Bloodydecks-approved captain, Chuy Gorillas (www.monsteryellowfin.com) on his tricked out panga Strike One. Chuy made a big deal about getting quality bait. In addition to getting caballitos (which he didn't charge separately for), we also went to several spots to catch chili verdes (some kind of jack) on sabikis. We also got some skipjacks and other small tuna type baits and loaded them in the tubes. It took a couple hours, but once we were loaded up we headed to the spot and didn't have to wait long before we had a triple hookup on large roosters. We kept slow trolling a variety of baits and it was apparent that the roosters only wanted chili verdes and skipjack. We hooked up fairly consistently from late morning to early afternoon, although there was a bit of a lull in there somewhere. We got 9 roosters during that time (and farmed 5 or so), and at some point we picked up a sierra and a bonita or two. The smallest was in the 30-35lb range and we got a few over 50lbs and one that was over 60lbs. When we started to run out of chili verdes we started putting out the caballitos and were able to nail three quality African pompano right at the end of the day. My brothers had each gotten one and I really wanted one to finish up the day and Chuy delivered. Awesome inshore fishing. We took the fish to a restaurant called Margaritas that Chuy recommended and they made the sierra into ceviche and the pompano in a variety of styles. Delicious.
Day 5
My brothers decided to take a break from fishing to go surfing so I went out with Chuy myself. Same deal as the day before except I was a lot more tired from reeling in all the fish myself. This time the mate was a guy named Largo. Younger guy but very good. Took a while to get the good bait but once we did it was game on. Started the day with a quadruple hookup on big roosters. Only landed one of them as the other three popped off as I was trying to reel them all in. Ended up with 10 big roosters again in the 30-60lb range, with more farmed than the day before because I couldn't reel everything in at once. Had another quadruple hookup later in the day; again only got one in. In addition I boated two nice amberjacks and two more African pompano. Inshore fishing really doesn't get much better than that. Even if it does I probably couldn't reel any more than that in anyway. Other people were catching fish but I don't think many if any were doing quite as well. According to my brothers the surfing was nothing special; kind of like Waikiki on a so-so day.
Day 6
Wanted to take as much advantage of the good fishing as possible, so we booked a shorter day from 6 to noon before we had to head to the airport. It took several hours to get good bait, which severely cut into fishing time, but we still managed 5 large roosters once we finally got to fishing. Great end to a great trip.
Kudos again to Chuy who is a fantastic captain in every way. I have no idea whether or not he speaks English as we all spoke Spanish with him the whole time (per our choice) but I'm sure he can communicate regardless. If you are in the Mita area you cannot go wrong with Chuy. Another nice thing is he tried to release all roosterfish (although a couple didn't make it because of gut hooking despite our use of circle hooks). A number of other boats we saw gaffed every rooster which was kind of disappointing.
I had the pleasure of catching most of my fish on my new custom rods made by Marc Higashi of Performance Tackle in Los Alamitos. He is the Hitori Hanzo of fishing rods. As always they performed beautifully, and my rod made especially for roosterfish got quite a workout.
March 2010
Flew into PV Sunday with my two younger brothers. After a ridiculous 2 hour wait in line to get through immigration we got to Customs where all the beef jerkey I bought at Fred Hall got confiscated. Not a great start, but it would take more than that to dampen our spirits. We were met by Dave Sanders and his wife Barbara at the airport and they drove us 3 hours to Tepic where we stayed the night at a comfortable hotel. Dave and Barbara are from Oregon but spend much of their time helping out at an orphanage in Tepic. The fishing business is supposed to help fund those endeavors.
Day 1
Got picked up at around 6 and taken on a 1 hour drive to Agua Milpa Lake. We then met our guide Rene and headed over to the camp to deposit our stuff. Dave and his wife have purchase a beautiful piece of property on the lake that is only accessible by boat. It has a palapa with hammocks and a bathroom with a hot water shower. It's perched on a hill with a great view of the lake and is closer to the good fishing spots than the other lodges near the dam. We started fishing around 8 and I got a bass on my first cast with a watermelon senko. That looked like a good sign but fishing was a little slow until we switched to small Fat Free Shad crankbaits in citrus color. After that we started whacking the bass pretty consistently. Neither of my brothers do much fishing but they were doing pretty well once they got the casting down. I finished the day with 47 bass and we had a total of 100 for the boat. Rene thoughtfully stayed out until we caught the 100th fish. The fish averaged about a pound with my brother Andrew getting the largest of around 4.5lbs. That night we slept on cots under the palapa, which was pretty comfortable.
Day 2
We started the day out a little earlier but didn't have much luck until around 10 on the crankbaits. I think we could have nailed some drop shotting in the morning but I cleverly forgot my dropshot tackle back at camp. After about 10 the fish started hitting the crankbaits pretty well again. I also got around 15 on a watermelon lizard. In total I finished with 42 and we got 86 for the boat. My brother Andrew again got the biggest fish at around 6.5lbs. We stopped fishing early around 230 so we could eat and then start the long drive to Punta Mita.
In summary, I think Fishin Mission Adventures (www.fishinmissionadventures.com) has a nice operation going. The level of service was high, the food was very good, and our guide was very good. The fishery is fantastic for numbers and a good place if you want to catch numbers of fish. It would be especially good for kids. If you are after lunkers this is probably not your place, although I'm sure there are some big fish in there.
Day 3
I had scheduled fishing with Kurt Hjort of Esperanza Sportfishing but when I talked to him the night before he said his boat was out of commission so he set us up with a guy named Balta. Balta was a nice enough guy, but I wasn't real impressed with him as a guide. The day didn't start out great because he headed out with the wrong group of anglers and left us waiting at the dock. We had to get another boat to pick us up and drive us to where he was fishing so we could switch onto his boat. He got some caballitos for bait but made no attempt to get any other types of bait which proved key on our other days. His tackle was very lacking and he appeared to not even have many hooks. We slow trolled the caballitos all day for one small bonita. No one else seemed to really be whacking them that day, but it seemed like we did worse than most. Perhaps sensing that his tip would be underwhelming, he decided to tack on a charge for bait which was never discussed. Again, seemed like a nice guy and I'm sure he catches fish when they are on but he didn't seem to have a deep bag of tricks for when they aren't.
Day 4
Having learned our lesson we booked with a Bloodydecks-approved captain, Chuy Gorillas (www.monsteryellowfin.com) on his tricked out panga Strike One. Chuy made a big deal about getting quality bait. In addition to getting caballitos (which he didn't charge separately for), we also went to several spots to catch chili verdes (some kind of jack) on sabikis. We also got some skipjacks and other small tuna type baits and loaded them in the tubes. It took a couple hours, but once we were loaded up we headed to the spot and didn't have to wait long before we had a triple hookup on large roosters. We kept slow trolling a variety of baits and it was apparent that the roosters only wanted chili verdes and skipjack. We hooked up fairly consistently from late morning to early afternoon, although there was a bit of a lull in there somewhere. We got 9 roosters during that time (and farmed 5 or so), and at some point we picked up a sierra and a bonita or two. The smallest was in the 30-35lb range and we got a few over 50lbs and one that was over 60lbs. When we started to run out of chili verdes we started putting out the caballitos and were able to nail three quality African pompano right at the end of the day. My brothers had each gotten one and I really wanted one to finish up the day and Chuy delivered. Awesome inshore fishing. We took the fish to a restaurant called Margaritas that Chuy recommended and they made the sierra into ceviche and the pompano in a variety of styles. Delicious.
Day 5
My brothers decided to take a break from fishing to go surfing so I went out with Chuy myself. Same deal as the day before except I was a lot more tired from reeling in all the fish myself. This time the mate was a guy named Largo. Younger guy but very good. Took a while to get the good bait but once we did it was game on. Started the day with a quadruple hookup on big roosters. Only landed one of them as the other three popped off as I was trying to reel them all in. Ended up with 10 big roosters again in the 30-60lb range, with more farmed than the day before because I couldn't reel everything in at once. Had another quadruple hookup later in the day; again only got one in. In addition I boated two nice amberjacks and two more African pompano. Inshore fishing really doesn't get much better than that. Even if it does I probably couldn't reel any more than that in anyway. Other people were catching fish but I don't think many if any were doing quite as well. According to my brothers the surfing was nothing special; kind of like Waikiki on a so-so day.
Day 6
Wanted to take as much advantage of the good fishing as possible, so we booked a shorter day from 6 to noon before we had to head to the airport. It took several hours to get good bait, which severely cut into fishing time, but we still managed 5 large roosters once we finally got to fishing. Great end to a great trip.
Kudos again to Chuy who is a fantastic captain in every way. I have no idea whether or not he speaks English as we all spoke Spanish with him the whole time (per our choice) but I'm sure he can communicate regardless. If you are in the Mita area you cannot go wrong with Chuy. Another nice thing is he tried to release all roosterfish (although a couple didn't make it because of gut hooking despite our use of circle hooks). A number of other boats we saw gaffed every rooster which was kind of disappointing.
I had the pleasure of catching most of my fish on my new custom rods made by Marc Higashi of Performance Tackle in Los Alamitos. He is the Hitori Hanzo of fishing rods. As always they performed beautifully, and my rod made especially for roosterfish got quite a workout.