Trip report from Sea of Cortez.

I did my annual Salt Patrol Bill Fishing Tournament this past week at Palmas De Cortez, located in Los Barriles. As always, it was a blast meeting with local fisherman and women. I encourage anyone who wants a safe adventure to look this place up. My brother in law from Oklahoma came and we were able to take 3rd place.
If you want a good idea of what to expect you can go to the Salt Patrol facebook page. I am starting to get the shore fishing dialed in and learned even more tricks for next year. I think my highlight was catching tuna with my spinning rod I took down, by twitching a hootchie out the back while locating the bigger schools. We normally do not keep bill fish unless they die during the fight. We kept one because it took the teaser in the gills and bled out.











































Joe

Fished out of Rancho Leonero Resort down the road a bit and it is a great area to fish to be sure. Hard to beat East Cape and La Paz areas for a vacation!

What I see here is pretty cool.

Thanks for posting the pictures and congrats on some great time away!!!

The ocean has some cool fishes in it.

Fish on...

Todd

Nice report and thanks for sharing!

I need to get back into blue water fishin', but you know....time & money.

Great pics, thanks for sharing. I made that trip some years ago. Our group ended up with a skipper who was lazy and didn't want to go more than a few miles off shore. He didn't have fresh bait and finally on the 3rd day I spotted a Marlin on the surface and yelled at the skipper, but he refused to believe me until I kept insisting and he turned around and found the fish. He put out his stinky bait and that repelled the Marlin.

On the first day his mate didn't show up because he was too hung over so he found someone else on the beach to replace the mate. Other boats were doing great on Tuna, but we couldn't get the guy to go out there. In the end I didn't tip him. So, he showed up at my room on the last day asking for a tip and I told him to F off.

This was not a Palmas De Cortez boat. It was one of the extra boats they brought in for the tournament. It was still a great time and maybe next year I will go again.

Yeah it can be a crap shoot getting decent guides in Mexico. Killer place though. I went to cabo for a week once. There were things I loved and things I didn't. Great pics!

I hope you provided immediate negative feedback to both the organizer and management. If you want to do a tuna run be sure to ask around for others who want to go and then use a resort's boat and crew. Pretty sure the pics of tuna were from fishing after the tournament was over - just an extra day of fising.

Thanks for the report!

Going to PV next week and looking to fish. Still need to get recommendations and book.

Didn't fish in Cabo last year but did good in 2014. I've done Mazatlán a couple of times with mixed results.

Idaho Mike,

Sorry about the crappy guide, the tournament only uses resort boats. All great guys and help each other out to find fish.

Larry B, the tuna was some pre-fishing fun and meat run. I like to go out on the boat I do the tournament with and get to know the captain and deckhand. They are not always the same crew every year.


Joe

I made the trip organizer aware of our experience. The Marlin fishing was pretty slow on this trip so boats went out targeting tuna during the tournament to get fish on board.

I had fished at Palmas De Cortez several times before this tournament and the resort, boats, and the catching was always great.

The tournament is a fun time and I would recommend it to anyone. I just had that one bad experience. I should have said something to the organizer after the first day and we probably would have been assigned a different boat. None the less the organizer took steps to make sure what happened with our group wouldn't happen again.

Crackerbox, that is good to hear. Thanks.

Good plan to "pre-fish." The guys I know who include a tuna run have done it after the tournament as they want to take fish home. Not sure if they can get it processed and frozen. I did that trip in 2019 and had fun with several firsts. Now for wahoo, yellowfin tuna and a bigger roosterfish.

Roosters are big time on my bucket list.