The Love Boat

That's no Roosterfish that Tony caught but when it comes to putting up a knarly fight that fish there is about as close as you can get. Its a Jack Crevalle, Toro in Mazatlan and its actually a cousin to my favorite fish, the Guyo. This guy here is about as big a one as I've ever seen, I think they come bigger but I'd almost hate to hook one, its kinda like landing a 100 pound Halibut....ya only need to to that once a day at our age. Man, did that fish fight...

Here's a pic of our good friend Tony Mercuro in his boat. Tone is a marlin and tuna chaser but today we wanted to get our wives out, stay close to shore and don't fish so hard that we make anybody mad, civilised ya know. So on a bluebird day, waves at -2 inches me and MP and Tony and Connie head out. Connie has a nice fish on in the pic below. I wish I had gotten a picture of all of us together but I was, ah, well kinda busy...I'll get to that in a bit.

This was the 1st time in a few years I've gone out in a boat. Its not that I dislike it, its just that I've spent 1/2 of my entire life in a boat and when I found the surf casting I was hooked big time. And I have to admit that when I go with someone else who is in command of the boat it drives me nuts. Everybody does things differently, I know that, but I just can't let go of what and how I'd do it...but today, no worries, no stress....its just fun...its the love boat . Right off the bat I was glad I came. As we cruised out after sunrise I flashed to my childhood, being mesmerised by the boat wake, its that feeling again for me. Then the light bouncing of the buildings in the distance and the feeling of anticipation for what might happen, or even what might not happen. The joy of the pursuit, the unknowns of it all.

Our plan was to go to a place Tony knows and get live mullet with sabichi rigs and then go after roosterfish with them...Well, the first victim in every battle is always the battle plan. We couldn't make our bait so we decided to do some bottom fishing with shrimp, no worries. You know you're in the right place when you're fishing next to guys like this.

So MP catches a fairly nice Pompano and then the strangest looking trigger fish I've ever seen and I get a pompano as well. But, because we were going to troll we don't have an anchor and as we drift over the structure we're hanging up a lot, really a lot.

I'm about as busy as I can be retying double hook set ups and Tony's finding hooks and weights and we're trying to keep the gals fishing. At one time we lost all 3 at once, yikes. So when Connie said she was tired of bottom fishing nobody argued, we were off on plan 'C'.

Not so far off the port beam Tony spots birds feeding, that's fish for sure. As we get close we see fish splashing and chasing, sardines are jumping out of the water to escape them . At first the fish were so aggressive that I thought they might be roosters but I suspected they were toro's. We put down 2 deep diving rapala's and set the clickers....it wasn't long and the rod went off hard and MP had a 10 minute tussle...gorgeous fish.

I've seen a few bait balls in my life, but this one was a doozy. As we got close there were so many toro's that their predominant yellow color had the entire surface shimmering, a golden moving mass of fish. Maybe you can click to enlarge this pic and see them better. Just incredible is the only way to describe that sight to a fisherman's eyes.

MP just described these fish as 'sturdy'. A few years back my friend Craig Kokeman called them 'noble'. They're certainly all of that, they really pull and I mean pull. I've heard the rooster called the 'minute a pound fish' as that's how long they take to land, likewise for cousin toro. Here's a pic of me doing the boat side wrangling. We caught enough for everybody to get some cardio in then headed in shore for one last troll hoping to get a corvina. We didn't. It was home at 2:00 with enough bottom fish for supper. A great day fishing with the people we love . MP summed it up pretty darn good " beats sitting around the terrace reading". So thanks Connie and MP, we'll do it again.