San Carlos Mexico another great trip

[fearnofish]

Sorry this is a long read and photo rich but this was too great of a trip not to share…

I put together a trip for 3 of us to head to San Carlos Mexico from Phoenix for 2.5 days of fishing. The 2 guys I took with me had never fished there and one had only fished out of a kayak once. Our plan was to target Corvina, Sierra, and Yellowtail. They had no idea what they were in for (truth be told neither did I).

Two of us left Phoenix at 4am and met the third in Nogales just before crossing the border. We headed south towing my ATV trailer I had converted to haul the three kayaks down, a Hobie Pro Angler, my 2019 Hobie Outback, and my original Ocean Kayak Big Game. The new highway that is almost finished made for an easy drive and we rolled into town right about noon. We were fortunate to get an early checkin at the Airbnb I had reserved for us and we were on the water by 2pm.

The first days plan was to target Corvina in close. We started hooking up with smaller ones almost immediately but from experience I knew there were big ones around… We spotted birds crashing bait and headed to them. Bait was running everywhere and I think every species of predator fish around were chasing them. We started getting bit off pretty quick and knew the Sierra were the culprits. The wind was blowing a bit so we basically paddled out and drifted back, and repeat. Casting swimbaits and jigging was the method of choice. Getting bit was constant and the adrenaline was flowing. We boated a few Sierra and got bit off by many more. None that were very big but still super fun to catch. As it got closer to sundown I finally hooked up with a decent Corvina that went about 8lbs. We kept after the bait and diving birds and bam I hooked up with something that was pulling hard. I thought it was a big Corvina but ended up being a nice 11lb yellowtail! All three target species in the first few hours of fishing! Not sure how many fish we ended up catching but we fished till after dark.

The next morning we were up and at it early. We launched from a cove and paddled out to the first spot. Plan was to jig for the yellowtail. There was plenty of bait around but we couldn’t get bit on the jigs so we headed out to the point to fish a little deeper water and see what was there. Trolling rapallas as we paddled we managed to pick up a few Bonita. Once we got to the point there were quite a few boats around trolling rapallas. I found a bait ball with arches underneath and dropped a jig. Fish on!! Jigs were the ticket for a couple hours. The bite was steady but not super hot and we managed to put a few in the bag. The best was yet to come…

Ricardo needed a bit of a break and had paddled back to the cove we launched from and little did we know he found a HOT bite when he arrived. Kevin and I made a few more drifts on the point before we headed to find Ricardo. Once we rounded the corner to the cove we saw birds diving everywhere and Ricardo yelling he was on fish! It turned out the yellowtail had the bait stacked up in this cove. Every direction you cast even right up to the bank we were hooking up. The yellowtail were not huge, they were running anywhere from 6 to 13 lbs. Every top water bait we threw we were hooking up. The faster you fished it the better. It was absolutely nuts!! Since the water was shallow you had to be careful they didn’t get you in the rocks and break you off. Needless to say I lost a few baits… I kid you not this bite went on for 3 hours, it was nonstop action! We released a TON of fish, kept quite a few to take home, and passed out some to a few locals that wanted some. We actually left the fish biting since we had quite a bit of work ahead to get them fileted.


The next morning I had Fernando of Catch 22 México Fishing Charters booked to take us out to San Pedro Island and dump us off in our kayaks. I have to say every trip I have booked with him has been nothing less than phenomenal! This trip was going to be the same. Fernando advised that we may want to stay in close since the bite was so hot but I wanted Kevin and Ricardo to feel what a bigger fish felt like. As an elk hunter we say you can’t kill a big elk if you shoot a small one! We couldn’t get all three kayaks on the boat so we took the outback and prowler big game. As luck would have it it wasn’t going to be my day, I hooked up multiple time but couldn’t get a fish to the kayak for one reason or another. Didn’t matter I had a blast and Kevin and Ricardo boated a bunch of fish! Despite the bull sea lion chasing us around and providing some sleigh rides we ended up with 17 yellowtail for the day and a few bonita. I'll say this about Fernando and it’s the reason I like to fish with him… he absolutely LOVES to fish and he fishes hard! His whooping and hollering is not for show, this man loves to fish! All in all for the 2.5 days we caught over 75 fish easily with the majority being yellowtail!! I’m gonna let the pictures tell the story from here.