Friends and Toro's

I might have more friends here in Mazatlan than I do in either Montana or at Mile 14. You see I left Montana and ever sense 1996 when we bought the property the summers are so work intense that I just haven't had time for more than all my boat launch and river friends. So it was with great surprise and I was so grateful when this guy here came up to me while fishing and asked " are you Jeff " ?

He is Juan Mendoza and his dad Jimmy was my first friend here in Mazatlan. In the early 2000's we could only stay a short time and were at the Mayan Palace with a timeshare exchange. Jimmy sold fishing trips there and of course I bought them. Jimmy taught me a lot about fishing and we had several suppers together through the years. I met Juan when Jimmy had us to his house in Colonia Zapata for Chile Relenos. Juan was in Jr. High and had his first guitar so we rocked it a bit and had a wonderful evening. Me moved on to our condo and Jimmy died 10 years ago so we lost track but Juan never lost the memories. So now we've fished together several times , he can throw it a mile. He's an engineer at a Tuna Factory and is married with a little girl named Victoria... We are so happy to have him again in our lives and he is now Team X emeritus and our new head of International relations. So cool.

There I am with our first consumable, almost one full month after launch. You had to know I'd catch one but if you wonder about the pic quality it's because to catch him I had to go to the 24 hour attack mode, You see the locals show up at sunset I hear them fishing into the night so I decided to ramp up the project and walla....now I'm fishing more than ever.

But what I lack in consumables I make up with on Toro's. People eat them and I have, in fact the first fish I ever caught was one that I thought it was a Tuna and Max and Sam said it was great fried fish. I think there would be little debate if I called myself the gringo Toro King of Cerritos. They seem to really go for the teaser I loop tie a couple feed above my swivel. Here's a pic of a guy who likes them and was happy for the gift and a close up of one with their preffered menu item. They are a noble fish.

So Dan and I do something we've always wanted to and just never got around to it, we went down to Olas Altas to fish and explore some of the rock out cropping and stairs to the water we had seen from the road. We parked at the Freeman and Dan headed up the beach and I headed down. I eventually got to fishing off a really cool elevated platform that is connected to the sea wall where the Piano Man is .....everybody following here ? An hour goes buy and just as Dan gets back to me I a really good Toro swallows a rubber swim fish. With rocks everywhere I tighten down and basically pull him over the tera firma until he's beached on the rocks about 30 feet below me. I decide to lift him and of course the line parted and he's just laying there.  Well ever sense I did the Carl Wallenda of the rocks a couple years back and damn near broke my neck I promised MP I would cease the idiot maneuvers so I decided I wasn't going down to get him but Dan looked around and found a fairly safe way and released my slimey with me feeling a bit cowardly....Here's pic of him laying there and Daniel to the rescue.

Right before the toro fiasco I snapped this pic of the sunrise...what a gorgeous place to fish.  Sun reflecting off the high risers in the Zona Dorado and it's good day to be doing what I do...

Some of you might remember the pics I've posted of the walk up and over Paseo Clausen that MP and I love to do. There are many huge cement patios and hand made stairs that go down a couple hundred feet to the water. This pic is at the bottom of one and we'll be going back to fish here, although we didn't catch that day it looks like Snapper central for sure.

I'm over and out with this edition of Mile 14, sorry I got a bit behind but I've got a few projects going and now I'm off to follow this example. I didn't get my camera out fast enough because right before I snapped both of these guys had Pacifico's perfectly balanced on their bellies at waters edge....living the life ! Continue on amigos...

Happy Place

Well Team X, the most misunderstood fishing team in Mazatlan is little short on man power so if you see me on the Beach make sure you turn in a resume...or buy me a beer, either will work. But Daniel and I took the leap of faith and drove all the way out to Puntas Negras which is the 3rd point north of Mazatlan that we fish, maybe 8 miles up the beach from the last high rise. Here's the view to the south and then to the north.

The people you see in the first pic are pneumatico's after oysters, so we're the only other people there and it's simply gorgeous in an isolated and fishy way. In the past it's been the go to place for huge catches of Corvina but today....as my friend Willy says " it was not for the stomach but for the soul" . This Toro I caught I tried very hard to turn it into a Corvina but it just didn't happen. It was a great morning of throwing and we laughed a lot.

One of the reasons we laughed pretty good was because of the road, or what really wasn't a road...It was entirely grown over, nobody had driven it sense last season and Dan's nice new truck took a real 'polishing', it kinda reminded me of how me and Chris's Arctic Cats looked after we drove them over a 3/4 inch willow forest for a mile. This pic of Daniel was right after he'd side swiped a huge cactus that looked like something out of the coyote and road runner cartoon.

He says he learned it from his dad who called that kinda huntin / fishin going ' wooding '. Now I like my old white Chevy to much and would never do that to it but Dan says you get em to use em. Yup. When we go remote like this there is always a bit of safety concern in the back of every Team X members mind but on this day we were as safe as safe could be....ain't no way a bad guy would do that to his truck.

By far the best view from an outhouse I've ever seen was at Petersville Alaska that looked straight at Mt McKinley which is now Mt. Denali....gorgeous....but this one here that we came across  has to run a steady second.

Last night and all day yesterday we had a tormenta. There were 20 ft. waves at sunset so I almost decided to do a hand holder instead of fishing this morning, sure glad I didn't. The tormenta had pushed sardines onto the beach and there were fish EVERYWHERE. I lost a 10 pound Snook when I went for the final pull onto the beach and at one point I threw a rubber swim bait into a bait ball and something bit it's tail off immediately, Yikes. I saw large fish chasing right onto the beach and at first thought they were Roosters but they turned out to be huge Toro. As I fought to land one I looked over at one point and a nice Red Snapper had beached himself for a bit as he was chasing the same bite. I must have caught 10 Toro like this one.

I had one of my light set ups that I use when I expect to throw for hours so it was a high risk maneuver. I knew that I wouldn't break the Loomis rod but these guys could easily jerk the guts out of the Stradic 5000 I was using. One time in Marmol I quit fishing because I only had one Stradic and I could just tell the Toro were to much....but this morning I couldn't stop, me and the slimey's both need the exercise. There was a Mexican man who had one a long long time when he asked for help. He had a large surf rod with a 6000 size reel so I thought he just wanted me to gaff for him but I finally realized he had no drag set, I showed him how to tighten and feel for it and when it was at max. It was the most exciting morning yet and I'm still pumped as I type 3 hours later.

There's something about the jetty at Pueblo Bonito, it seems to be Roosterfish central. I didn't catch one the other morning but we saw many and the local expert Jesus caught 2. This is one Team Xer Bob caught, ain't that just the cutest Guyo you've ever seen ?

Try to love on your wife,
stay close to your friends,
toast each sundown with wine,
don't let the old man in. 
                    Toby Keith

Day of the Dead

I't not as big a deal as Carnaval but it's pretty big ju-ju. MP really wanted to see the costuming and all the art influence for the Day of the Dead celebration where people honor and remember their passed loved ones. So we did our due diligence and reserved a night at the wonderful La Siesta Hotel on the beach in Olas Altas so we wouldn't have to come home  late in the evening, Here's the view from our room for the next two nights...yup , I said two nights, turns out we were off on the main event by one day so whats there to do ? Just wait I guess, what else we got to do.

Everywhere in town are these alters that both commemorate and show the persons interests and outer and inner selves. The alters are tiered to show there ascension to heaven and usually the lower tier will have the wickedness of whiskey or such and the top tier a favorite fruit or juice or pop.  Here's one for the famous Opera Singer Angela Peralta... I never would have figured her for a rounder. One of the things I found interesting is that many of the alters were for long lost loved ones , many generations back, Grieving and love last longer than one lifetime and I guess, I knew that but never really thought about it.

The Venado store had my favorite for Jose Jimenez who must have been a guy like me, an entertainer and musician. They had free beer for us in Jose's honor and later the next day I was to learn what a big part of the traditions free beer is...

So on our ' wrong' night we went and ate at El Tunnel which is the restaurant that started it all for us. The place has more refined than that the El Tunnel of 20 years ago but the food and the service was the same fantastic as always. Sinaloa style tacos which is piled and not folded, mine were potato/cheese and MPeasy had her usual chicken, that girl can eat chicken, We ran into our friend Clara who was drawing at the art school and then we sat on a bench in the Plaza and watched the people and visited with a man and his daughter from Culican who wanted to practice there english. They were in Maz to visit the graves of his parents. 

The next night we sat on the sea wall with hundreds of our new friends to watch the parade. we had every intention to view the parade from street level but about 8:00 the on shore breeze stopped and...did I tell you how hot it is ??? so , as much as I hated to retreat we went upstairs to view from our room patio, kinda cool in two ways...Here's pic of us on the sea wall waiting to report for Mile 14.

Pretty soon all of us see bottle rockets flying and hear music coming from up the malecon and it's upon us. The skeleton head lead the way with dance troupes and a other floats.

Wish my pics had turned out better. Then....the really unusual occurred . We see a truck coming with a hundred or so people surrounding it, I see a projectile or 10 fly into the crowd and realize all the excitement is FREE BEER. They had cooler totes full of Pacifico Light and were giving away hundreds and hundreds of cold ones. People in the crowd would wave and a guy would chuck one too them, man, good thing they didn't have bottles but I'd bet ya a ....beer,,, that more than one person got pole axed by a Pacifico Light that night. I have a great video but I just can't get it to upload....So me and my running partner both say we've never seen anything like that before and Walla...ANOTHER truck comes by the same way ! Then we have some dancers and an old wrecked pirate ship and most likely a politician or two and low and behold....yet a 3rd free beer truck goes by. Yikes, I saw one guy walking along with three cans in his left hand while he power chugged with his right. mmmm, maybe a good thing that we were upstairs. What a place !

I've caught a lot of fish , just no ' consumables ' sense I let that Grouper go to build my karma, But this morning I caught my first Roosterfish of the 2019 /20 season. Oh baby....he hit hard, ran off line and jumped like silver salmon....and weighed every bit of 10 0unces...I'm not exaggerating, He was awful cute just a bit on the svelte side. A fish like this you don't have long enough arms for so don't even try, you'll look ridiculous.

Many, many Loco fish. They're boney and look a bit like a Mullet, They jump and and are hard to land as they have a soft mouth so to catch two at once is a pretty good trick, one on the teaser and one on a lazer minnow. I caught one this morning and my friend Daniel quickly tied on a bare hook and then lip hooked the Loco and let him swim off. I told him that if he catches a fish on a loaner fish he's a first ballot inductee into the Mile 14 Hall of Fame.

See you guys later. Now that we're in Maz I'll write more. And for all of our friends in Alaska we hope the weather breaks and you get to doing some of the winter things Alaskans love.