Catch-and-Release Fishing

Intro | Catch-and-Release | Marlin | Other Species | Tackle | Travel Tips

Until recently, fly fishing wasn't much of an issue at Cabo, or anywhere else up and down the eastern seaboard of Baja California. Traditional Mexican guides had little patience with fly lines sailing around or through their boats. But that's changing now.


Ray Beadle bills (above) and then releases a striped marlin off the coast of the Baja Penninsula. The fly is Beadle's own Mackerel pattern.

Like guides elsewhere around the world, Mexicans have discovered that fly fishers are good customers. These customers know what they want, they're willing to pay for it, and they're generally well behaved and appreciative of services rendered. They often tip well, and many of them release their catch to be caught another day.

A decade ago, that wasn't important around Cabo. In years past, the machismo of bringing in a boat full of dead fish was witness of the ability of the captain and his crew. Indeed, reputations hung on the death toll. If the anglers had no plans to eat the fish, they gave them to the locals. The prospect of fresh fish kept captains, crew members, and guides hustling. Fresh fish often saved a family from going hungry.


Los Arcos is one of Cabo's most distinctive landmarks, and at times, a pretty good place to fish as well.

But in a town like Cabo San Lucas, where generations of fishing guides and captains have handed down information from father to son, all subtle changes in conditions are noticed. It only takes this generation of guides asking their grandfathers how things used to be, to make an instant comparison. And it's readily apparent that there aren't the same number of fish in the area that there were 50 or 100 years ago.

That fact, and the observation that fly fishers put their fish back--to be caught again by another paying customer days or weeks later--have ingratiated fly fishers with the fishing guides of Cabo. Now they're happy to see you. Yacht captains have more trouble accommodating fly fishers than the single guide in a 20-foot "panga," but they both have learned how to meet a fly fisher's needs.

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