Trip to Puerto Vallarta 10/16 through 10/23
I tried to put the pictures in but had problems up loading them :mad: . If your interested they are on bloodydecks.com It looks good having one tuna go completely accross the stern of your Billfisher.
After fishing with Josh for a couple of days in February of this year, I knew Puerto Vallarta was the place to take the Patròn. I immediately started making plans for this fall and after 8 loooong months the time arrived. The plan is for the boat and truck to stay in dry storage at Paradise Village when I’m not there fishing and to make four week long fly down and fish trips with the last trip finishing up in mid January.
The boat left from El Cajon at 2am on Thursday the 13th headed down the highway toward Nogales. Fortunately I wasn’t with the boat thus missing the beautiful 1500 mile drive. The boat crossed the border at about 3pm and as usual the fact that the Patròn is a documented vessel gave the Mexicans at the border a fits. They want to see a state registration. After an hour of back and forth the journey continued and the boat arrived in Puerto Vallarta Saturday morning. Other than one flat on the trailer, the trip went flawlessly.
Sunday morning my brother Rick and I flew down for six days of trying to round up a few stray cows.
Sunday 10/16
The day finally arrived. A two hour flight via Aeromexico from San Diego and Rick and I are in Puerto Vallarta by 2:30 in the afternoon. We hook up with Joel who drove the boat down and drop him at the bus station so he can go to Guadalajara to visit family before flying back. It’s off to the super mercado and then to Paradise Village to hook up and launch the boat. The launch was exciting in that the tide was low and the launch ramp was slick so we slid the truck down the ramp and as soon as the boat was in the water I started the boat engine so I could use the boat to stop the parade if necessary. Fortunately the truck oozed to a stop and the launch was a success. The truck and trailer went to the dry storage area and we headed out to try and make bait. We worked at it for two hours in the evening and two hours in the morning and all we had to show for our efforts was a lot of sleep deprivation and not one single caballito.
Monday 10/17
After the failed morning bait effort, we slowly cruised out to Corbeteña while dining on fruit and lard laced pan dulce’s for breakfast. The slow cruise enabled us to both catch a few winks so we would be fresh and rested when we caught up with the herd of cows. We arrived at Corbeteña mid day and started working on bait. All we needed were two for the lines and a couple of spares in the tuna tubes. Why skipjack get within a thousand miles of Corbeteña is a mystery to me. They are on everybody’s hit list. Tuna, marlin and fisherman are all trying to wipe them out.
Before leaving for PV I read an interesting article by the world class big game fisherman Peter Wright regarding the value of skipjack as a bait and how to rig to catch them. In the rigging portion of his article he suggested using 20# for rigging your hoochys. What a waste this was. The skippies ate my hoochy’s like they were snacks and busted the 20# like it was nothing. Not to mention straightening out hooks that were appropriate to 20# but here were way to light for the task at hand. Thirty #, 40#, and 50# didn’t get the job done either. Everthing that lives in these waters is tough. Sixty # and live bait hooks seemed to work pretty well. Since the hoochy rigs take a while to tie, we pretty much killed Monday perfecting our bait acquisition and rigging technique and getting the lay of the land (water?). We anchored up at Corbeteña and spend the night rocking and rolling since the ripper current and 15 knot wind were about 60° out of sync.
Tuesday 10/18
It was still sloppy in the morning but what the hell, we’re in cow town. Bacon and eggs for breakfast and were ready to go Our now polished bait skills get us two baits in the tubes and two baits out in about half an hour and were in the game. Two hours later the starboard bait gets ambushed and its game on for my brother and some as yet unknown denizen of the deep. Forty minutes later and he has a nice 120# YFT on the deck.
Both of us were happy with the new Avet T-RX Quad reel. I know, spam, spam, spam. All the other reels on the boat are tricked out Penns but there is no comparison. These things are tighter than a bulls butt in fly season and when you jack that drag up until your light in the heels they are still smooth as silk. Ok spam over.
With the first fish under our belt it’s my turn to kick some big fish butt. Thirty minutes later it’s game on again. This fish is definitely a larger number and he and I are really giving each other a work out when at the 45 minute mark the hook pulls. How do you pull a 20/0 circle hook after 45 minutes of hard pulling. I know it happens live with it. We were pleased with the day and hauled our tired butts back to Punta Mita for a little food and some seriously needed sleep.
Wednesday 10/19
0 dark thirty and we’re headed back to Corbeteña. We are getting pretty good at the bait game now and we pick up four baits, get tangled in some gill netters mess, clear that go another 100 yards and one of the baits meets an unfortunate end. This fish is really strong. Little did I know just how strong. I’ve got 135# spectra to 125# mono to 200# fluro and a 20/0 mustad circle hook. This terminal gear is set up on the Avet and a 5 ½ foot Calstar 5555XXH and I’m fishing 35 to 50 pounds of drag. This is serious gear for serious fish. My brother is running the boat and he is working the fish hard. He’s got a great aptitude for running the boat and he kept me in good position most of the time and with maximum pressure on the fish. What could go wrong? At three and a half hours mark I found out what could go wrong. My legs were tired of being in a flexed fighting position and starting to cramp. At the four hour mark my right arm decided that it had also had enough of this and it started to cramp badly making turning the handle an excruciatingly painful experience. I’m drinking water, eating bannas and whining like a girly man. At the 4 hour and twenty minute mark the fish finally settled into a circle. I don’t know whether he is physically tired or just tired of my whining and calling him some very ugly names. At just short of the 5 hour mark the flying gaff goes home and we cinch him up to the boat and just sit on the deck for 15 minutes. Twenty minutes later courtesy of a come along and he is on the deck of the Patròn. The bathroom scale said 286 and he tapped out at 288. I’m going with the 288 since parts of him were on the deck when he was on the scale.
This was my sixth fish over 200 and he was the toughest by far. We were over eight miles from where we hooked the fish so we started to slowly motor back up to the rock. About Two miles from the rock we came upon a low budget version of a long line. Since they aren’t supposed to long line this area we decided that the dumpster would be a more appropriate spot for the long line and we started to pull it. Two miles later we came to the end and we had two trash bags full of long line and had released one small but very dead dorado. We decided that the day was done for us and started back to Punta Mita for the night. We hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles when I picked up another long line in the prop. Two hours later, after pulling and replacing a prop we were on our way again (Note in the process I dropped a thrush washer, fortunately had a spare). Loooong day.
Thursday 10/20
This was try and fix it day so we went to PV for some fuses to try and get the generator back on line, have lunch, BS with Josh who was also in the repair and maintenance mode, and to pick up a few supplies. This was my first chance to see Paradise Village and it’s really a nice place.
Friday 10/21
At this point in the trip you really have to come to grips with the toll these fish, the intensity of the get a bait and get it on the hook and be ready drill and the sloppy ocean conditions are starting to have on your mind and body. When you combine this with the tropical weather that is great for sipping Piña Coladas by the pool, but sucks for serious physical activity, the fish harness starts to look more like a medieval torture device than a fine piece of fishing gear.
None the less, we are off again for an early start to Corbeteña to continue the tuna wars. It gets light enough to fish at a little before 7 am and by 8 we’ve got our baits and are on the hunt. The hunt didn’t last long and by 9 am I’m hooked up with another good fish. Fortunately this seemed to be a good fish but not one of the “evil and I’m going to hurt you badly fish”. After 40 minutes of work we we’re surprised to be sinking the gaff in a 244# YFT.
The rest of the day was spent futilely trying to get more bait but the skippies were not cooperating so after a bite of one skippie every two hours at 5 o’clock we called it a day and headed back to Punta Mta for the evening.
Saturday 10/22
We drag our selves out of the rack at 5:30 wondering how in the hell Josh and the rest of the fishing fools do this for months on end without dying in the process. But what the hell, we’re fishing and the cows are waiting. Bait acquisition has become a much tougher issue. We get the bait for round one fairly quickly and head out for the hunt. The bites come quickly but the “just kill the bait but don’t swallow it” type of bite. Back to the bait ground and the going is next to impossible. After two hours we finally pick up a couple of baits, put them on and almost immediately a 350 # black climbs on for the ride. Unfortunately he only wanted about a 20 second ride. Got outside with the last bait and after about a half hour he’s destroyed but not eaten. Three more hours looking for bait proved unsuccessful so we got the skunk for our last day of fishing and headed in to Punta Mita for our final night.
Sunday 10/23
Sunday was devoted to cruising slowly to PV, scrubbing, cleaning and repairing for the next trip. Our final event was pulling the boat out at PV. Because Ford is on their fifth week of trying to get my 4wd F350 powerstroke running, I had to take the boat down with a 2wd F250. It took an hour and six guys in the bed of the truck to get up the engineering marvel they call a launch ramp with the boat.
Post trip comments.
The trip is an incredible adventure and I would definitely recommend it, but taking your own boat is a big undertaking and it’s not a cheap way to fish. Before going on your own I would strongly urge you to get some big fish experience and some PV experience. A couple of days fishing with Josh or one of the other better PV skippers will prove invaluable or can be a great end in itself. I would also recommend spending some time talking to people that have done the trip. There are lots of details to attend to. It’s not like hooking up and going to Ensenada for the weekend. I’m headed back in three weeks for round two of a four trip experience. Now that the exhaustion has worn off I’m looking forward to round two. We hit PV during a good one week period and it may not be the same next trip, but fishing for big fish is exciting
