Fishing buddies on a quest to outsmart the wily rooster

By Kent Black

IN THE CLEAR, emerald-green water of Baja's Sea of Cortés, there was no mistaking the dark, two-foot-long shape swimming in lazy S's in the trough ten feet offshore. Roosterfish—the permit of Baja for fly fishermen—can grow to 60 pounds or more. But their allure is not the size or fight, it's the satisfaction of getting the persnickety bastards to take the fly.

I stripped out some line into the plastic tray tied around my waist and began false-casting to get the distance—stripping baskets are essential in saltwater fly-fishing to keep the line from getting tangled up in the surf. I cast and dropped the fly a few feet from his nose. He ignored it. He was cruising so slowly that I ran up the beach for another try. Again he swam right by. Twice more I ran ahead of him and cast, getting so frustrated that I didn't notice the line had come out of my basket and wrapped around my ankles. I turned to run again—and fell flat on my face in six inches of water. My stunt won me the Daily Idiot Award, conferred by my friends Charlie, Stuart, Shep, and Casey. Charlie had won the first day's award when he foul-hooked an ATV on his backcast. In lieu of catching a fish, a good fishing story is the next best thing.

This trip marked the 15th year my friends and I have gotten together to fish. We call ourselves the Mandalay Rod Club, after the road we lived on after college, where the idea for our annual fishing trip originated over Bombay martinis. Despite careers and families and other such impediments, most of our ten members have managed to rally for trips to such locales as the McKenzie and Umpqua in Oregon, Painted Creek Lodge in Alaska, Martha's Vineyard, and now Los Barriles on the East Cape of Baja.

Los Barriles was not an obvious choice. Less than 80 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, that bastion of cruise-ship/time-share mentality, the East Cape region is better known for its huge charter fishing fleet, which ferries anglers out to deep water to fish for marlin, tuna, and dorado. Fortunately, Los Barriles hasn't yet fallen completely to the rampant development and gringofication that has befallen Cabo San Lucas. Although the coastline has more than its share of tasteless, if expensive, expat beach houses, the town's five restaurants are about as auténtico as a St. Louis Chili's, and the tequila at the Supermercado Chapito's is 25 percent more expensive than in the States, there is still a pretty laid-back feel to the area. Phone service reached here only eight years ago, and away from the "developed" part there is nothing but unsullied coastline and the occasional encounter with a subsistence fisherman. During the intense heat of June, when most tourists were staying away, we were able to rent a fully equipped three-bedroom villa on the beach with an uncluttered 180-degree view of sand, sea, and sky.

And we missed it. By 10 p.m., while the señoritas were parading onstage, the five of us were all snoozing obliviously, dreaming of the 60-pound roosterfish that would gobble our Clouser flies and strain our 20-pound test when we headed out the next day at 6 a.m.

The attraction for us Mandalay boys was sightcasting from shore. Other than the Caribbean and the Florida Keys, there are few North American sea waters that allow you to sight and stalk a fish. In the Sea of Cortés, with its estimated 850 species of fish, there are dozens of species that can be caught along the shore. We hooked up with local outfitter Gary Graham, a passionate angler and holder of numerous world records who operates his guide service, Baja on the Fly, out of his beachfront home a couple of miles south of Los Barriles. Graham fixed us up with a guide and the strategies he's learned by trial and error over the past 25 years.

Our daily routine was to saddle up at first light and take off for Lighthouse Point 12 miles to the south. Along the way we'd try to spot "boils," patches of panicking baitfish being rounded up for breakfast by larger predators such as jacks, roosters, and porgies. By 10 a.m. the sun would be high enough to give the water enough clarity for sightcasting.

Cruising up the coast, we were on full fish patrol. We sometimes hunted in a pack; more often we fished alone. The roosters were easy to see, but spotting a silver flash from a well-camouflaged jack or ladyfish was more difficult. It was Shep, our club scientist, who figured out that the jacks were lying in troughs just a couple of feet offshore. The size of our catch then escalated so dramatically that we stopped keeping score.

We also caught ladyfish, porgies, trumpets, and a few fish we couldn't identify, but no roosters—although Casey was on the hunt till the end. We voted unanimously to return to Baja for an unprecedented bi-annual trip. And we'll keep coming back, at least until we land one of those damned roosters on a fly.