Tony Reyes Fishing Reports

TONY REYES FISHING TOURS

B/M JOSE ANDRES

SAN FELIPE, BAJA MEXICO

Sunday April 25 to Friday April 30, 2004

For seventeen years now I have headed to San Felipe with a group of guys to jump onto the Jose Andres for a week. This spring however, I was a little skeptical of the trip given that we had a few problems last October and with the addition of the new boat to the fleet there were going to be some new faces among the crew and guides aboard the Jose Andres.

I will start off by saying that this was one of those great trips. Even though fish counts weren't spectacular they were very respectable for a spring time trip and especially so for fishing during a slack tide. The Jose Andres never looked and performed any better than it did last week. The captain "Poncho", was a little quiet but skippered with experience and confidence. And the crew, as always, treated us very good. The five guys who had signed on through the Longfin fit in well and were good fishermen, taking two of the five big fish honors. I would have to say that the cook "Sergio" did an especially good job, the food was excellent. Except for the couple of days of "Baja Springtime Wind", this was one of those trips where everything seemed to be working well.

Now for the fishing! Our group has fished in the spring the last three years now and every trip has been so different. To my surprise we actually caught bait this year in San Francisquito and at Refugio. Although a lot of the fish were taken on the troll, the bait really paid off the last day. I have never seen such a variety of species in quantities. The group caught the usual allotment of spotted bass combined with some rather large Sheephead, Pargo and some real nice Yellowtail along with quite a few White Sea Bass. Other top fish were yellowtail weighing 19.3, 25.3 and 30 pounds along with a 30 pound White Seabass that was landed the last day in the Punta Bafeo area. The lures that seemed to work the best were the Mirr0Lure 111 with pink being the hottest, followed by the orange, fire tiger and then Ron's homemade scud. As for the iron, chrome and the standard blue and white seemed to be working the best. The bait was hard to come by but very large at San Francisquito and plentiful but very small at Refugio. It would be a good idea to have a wide range of hook sizes along, (3/0-8/0).

In conclusion, I have to mention the skyline, everyday of this trip we were blessed with a magnificent and brilliant sunrise and sunset. I'm not sure if it was that I just noticed it more or if it just worked out that way. Whatever the case it was all good.