Cabo San Lucas is known for its outstanding Marlin fishing. They have blue, black and striped marlin; all found only a few miles offshore. The marlin are so close to shore that on occasion they’ll be spotted in the marina waters.
Autumn and Winter are the peak times of year for catching marlin, but there are still many fish worth hunting in the summer. Even if you miss out on that trophy marlin, I believe the incredibly bizarre rooster fish to be far from a consolation prize.
For the entire month of July, I decided to head to Cabo all by myself to work and live on the Blue Sky fishing boat. It was confirmed by many people that I had lost my mind. A 26 year-old female travelling alone to live at a marina in Mexico does sound a little crazy, but it was one of the best decisions that I have ever made.
The marina community made staying on the boat a really special experience for me. It was a unique lifestyle that I can only describe as being like that of a homeless Queen. Many days, the neighboring boats would invite me over for fresh sashimi, ceviche and cold beers. Everyone was extremely friendly and gener- ous; I rarely wanted for anything. To top it off, some nights, when the boat was too hot to sleep in, I would go to the top tower and fall asleep in the cool breeze as I watched
the stars.
One of the rare days that we did not have charters, one of the first-mates and I took out the kayak for some bottom fishing. He had never kayak fished before, but since I do it a lot in Florida I felt confident that we could head offshore together in a two person kayak. The two of us headed out with determination and a thick language barrier in a kayak with no seat attachments and no rod holders. He selected a point 11 kilometers away and we began to paddle there. In the beginning the waves weren’t overly large and we were able to ride the current a little bit. It took us a few hours to get to the spot and by that time the wind had begun to pick up creating some white-caps.
We set up over the spot and dropped down our bait. Immediately I hooked up with a trig- gerfish and as I reeled it up, there was another fish following it. With a heavily rolled ‘R’, Julio started shouting “rooster, rooster”. We rigged up with a bigger hook and tried to en- tice him back, but to no avail. The current was picking up and pushing us into the rock wall, where the waves were breaking 30 feet tall. Julio was getting a little nervous and was un- able to steer us away quickly enough. We got into a rhythm where he would rig up the bait while I paddled for 10-20 minutes to get back to the rock bottom. We had time for one drop as we drifted back a quarter mile and repeated the process for hours. I was exhausted and it was too rough to even stop to eat my lunch. A few hours later, we decided to call it a day.
We paddled back into the current as the wind picked up significantly. With no rod hold- ers, I pinched a rod between my legs to troll a top-water popper-lure for roosterfish, all the while paddling and steering hard to keep from being spun by the waves. It took about 3 hours to paddle back and each boat we passed stared at us and took photos. Appar- ently kayak fishing isn’t very popular in Cabo and I now understand why. I worked almost every day that I was there, as the lovely crew and I would take one to three charters out daily. We would spend most of the time during the trips trolling a variety of lures for tuna, Dorado and marlin. The days when we were unsuccessful during this off-season, we would head inland to bottom fish. On the days when we were successful catching the game fish, we would raise a flag for each fish with an image of the species. It was interesting to see all the boats at the marina at the end of the day fly- ing the flags of their recent catches and it pro- vided a great opportunity for bragging rights.
We were able to catch several roosterfish this month including two five footers that were replicated for trophies. I was informed that the roosters of this size are very intelligent and can only be tricked into taking a hook us- ing pink fluorocarbon leader with a line test of no greater than 50 pounds. We also used medium sized 5/0 j-hooks with live bait. It seemed that the type of bait was not as im- portant as it was to have it be lively. All of the roosters were caught about 100 yards from the shoreline, both near sand beaches and rock outcrops.
The roosterfish may not be known for its con- sumption quality, but it is one of the hardest fighting fish for its size. Both of the trophy fish took over twenty minutes to land.
If you are looking for a different kind of fishing in a place with good food and great people, come to Cabo for your trophy rooster! The FishBrain App will be running a contest in
the near future to win a trip on the Blue Sky fishing yacht. Download the free mobile app and check in at fishbrain.com for more information. I look forward to being your host for this trip!
The locals don’t fully understand the appeal of catching this species, but since this unique critter is not found in many places in the world, it is definitely sought-after by many tourists.
During the month of July in Cabo, we experienced the nearby hurricane Dolores.
For a few days it had affected the success of catching marlin and Dorado, but the rooster and grouper bites remained consistent both before and afterwards. The bottom fishing is always a guarantee and lush with gorgeous and colorful species I had never seen before.
I thoroughly enjoyed my month of yacht camping on Blue Sky in Cabo San Lucas and
I have to give a huge thank you to my spon- sor Dorsal Brand for sending me! To all of the crew, Captain Juan, Julio, Mario and the boat owner, Jim, thank you for the stellar hospitality– see you again soon!
Quinlyn Haddon
QuinlynHaddon@gmail.com
PHOTOS BY: Julio Telles
Dorsalbrand.com
BlueSkyFishing.net
