Sailfish Anyone?

Today was a tough one. After a gangbuster day yesterday, today was quite slow. We drove around forever looking for sargasso (seaweed) and just couldn't seem to find much. The sargasso is where you will most likely find dorado if anywhere. It provides shelter on the hot summer days and today was HOT, believe me. So, after driving around in the panga for what seemed like forever, we decided to go in search of sailfish. We knew where the billfish had been hanging out so that's were we decided to concentrate our efforts.

Trolling is not something I like doing particularly but sometimes when you can’t find Sargasso or the fish, you don’t have much choice but to do some trolling. In the case of billfish, if you see one and can get the panga close and cut the motor, throw in a live sardine and if the fish is willing to eat the bait, then you have a chance at catching one casting to it. I caught a nice 130+ pound sailfish back in 2000 in Loreto casting flies but it is not often you get this opportunity as they often will just go down deep and disappear when they see the boat.

Today, we had some sailfish around so decided to try trolling through them. I secretly was hoping if we had a hookup, that it would be my boat partner Steve’s line that hooked up, not mine as I was still extremely sore from fighting my big dorado from yesterday and didn’t think I’d have the energy or strength to fight a billfish.

It was lucky for me, and Steve, that indeed it was his line that was getting some hits with a billfish following his fly. The pangero (guide) was very good at manipulating the boat slowing it down to let the sailfish bite the fly and then gunning the motor to try and set the hook. After a few tries, he was successful in hooking up the sailfish and then Steve was in for a fun ride. It was his first ever billfish on a fly rod so he was thrilled as was I that it was on his rod and not mine!

After about 10 minutes, Steve landed his first sailfish, a 60 pounder and I was very happy that I got to take lots and lots of photos! Well done, Steve