I'm back! My trip to El Salo was organized by WON Bass tournament director Mike Kennedy and sponsored by Okuma. I met up with Mike, Sid McDonald, Mark Rogers of Okuma and his dad, Rich, Bill, and Jim at LAX after flying in from SFO on Sunday morning. Everything went smoothly and we were picked up at the airport in Mazatlan by the driver from Pro Bass Adventures for the hour and half drive to the hotel. The hotel was located on the outskirts of the city of La Cruz. The place was nice, very clean and the food was excellent. It was about like staying at a Motel 6 but with bigger rooms and a good Mexican restaurant for breakfast and dinner.

Fishing started with a 4:30am wakeup call ( 3:30am PST ouch! ). We ate breakfast and headed to the lake around 5am. The drive was 30 minutes in the van. At the lake they have a lodge type building where lunch is served and a dock where the boats are kept. The boats were all nice Ranger fiberglass boats with 80 or 90hp 4-stroke Yamaha motors. They had Minn Kotas on the bow and in the stern for the guide. They had X-65's or similar on the bow and on the console. The guides were there ready to go every morning. The whole operation was very professional and worked like clockwork each day.

One big question I had when I went was, what was the lake like? I'll do my best to explain ...

The lake on the whole was much deeper than I thought it would be. It's about the size of Don Pedro, but there are hundreds of little coves, cuts, and maybe a dozen islands. There is wood everywhere, mostly standing. The wood is really tall too, which means that a lot of big standing fields of timber were really in 10 to 30 feet deep. The bank ranged from shallow muddy flats to sheer rock cliffs. There is a LOT of rock in this lake. The other thing the lake had a lot of was hyacinth. Floating fields of it choked off one of the river arms almost completely. Other parts of the lake had almost none, or had it only in pockets in the back of windblown cuts and coves. I should have taken more pics but I was fishing and I didn't feel like playing photographer :)

I fished with Sid all three days and our guide Esteven (sp?). One thing to keep in mind is that our guides spoke absolutely zero english. When I say zero, I mean none whatsoever. I speak some spanish, more than anyone on our trip, but it was still very difficult to communicate since I didn't now a lot of fishing related words. If you go, I would HIGHLY recommend forking out whatever extra money it takes to get an American guide.

Now for the fishing.

Day 1: We started fishing topwater on some hyacinth bank. To be honest, with all the hype about the lake I kind of had it in my mind that the fish would be jumping on my hook left and right. After about half an hour, this was apparently not the case! After a bit we pulled up on a rocky point and Sid banged two 4 pounders on a big white blade. OK, that's more like it. I cranked a couple minnows on a fat free shad and that was it for that spot. We ran to some deep wood and tried fishing plastic with no luck. Sid had heard froma buddy who had been there a few weeks earlier that the fish were busting talapia in the cuts and small coves. Sure enough he spotted a fish busting up shallow. I got on the trolling motor and headed over there. Second cast with a 9" MS Slammer and I watch a nice fish wack it. It was a spawned out looking 6-8, but I was stoked to get a wood fish. We started bouncing down these little cuts and throwing reaction. I made a few casts with a 7" Fin-S-Fish in a shad color and watched a fish come up and eat it. Another decent fish at 5-11. I lost another good bite back in a little cut and we felt like we kind of had a pattern going fishing small shady cuts with grass or hyacinth in it. Once it got really hot and calm though, this seemed to shut off and the guide took us to some more deep stuff. Nothing doing there for an hour or so. We came up to one shady cut and I said to Sid, "if there's a fish here it's going to be right there." Pitched out the fluke, line jumper and a 4-5 came to the boat. That was it for the morning. Decent fishing we thought but we were hoping for some bigger bites.

The afternoon was pretty slow. We tried deep wood some more since the guide took us there. I did dump one fish that felt like a big one on a 6" Whitmer no-name reaper in about 20 feet. We plunked away at that for quite a while but it just wasn't happening. The guide took us to a cove with some cuts and I took the t-motor again. Sure enough I banged out 3 slammer fish by pitching it up to the shady cuts and twitching it. They were 4-2, 4-5, and 4-10. I also snapped a rod casting. Don't use worm rods for swimbaits :) After that more tough fishing. We saw lots of busting fish in the late evening on the shore but the ones we caught were all small.

Back at the dock, most folks reported so-so fishing. Mike and Rich did have a good day with a 9-8 and a couple 7's on topwater. They had found a really good topwater bank that wound up producing a bunch of nice fish during the the 3 days. Our other two boats did ok like us. Some other guys from Georgia with American guides did well with two over 10 fishing creek channels with purple lizards and senkos.

Day 2: The second day we wanted to get some good topwater in the morning. The guide took us to some shallow flats and there were fish moving and bait breaking which looked promising. Sid snapped his rod first cast on the big blade, but he got back in action with a different rod and banged a good fish right away. The fish boiled on his blade close to the boat and weighed a solid 8lbs 8oz. We were stoked and hoping this was a good sign for the day. Unfortunately the rest of the morning was pretty slow. We caught a bunch of dinks on topwater and Sid got another fish that was 4 something on the blade. The mid-day was really slow. We couldn't find the deep fish, and our shady cut fish were not biting.

After lunch and siesta (siesta and lunch are 2 hours BTW) we headed back out. The first couple spots were more deep water nothing spots, so the guide finally took us further up the lake to some good looking cuts and coves. We pull in and I see one bust on the shore right away. I grabbed my slammer, threw out and got nailed by a healthy looking 5-11. OK, this is more like it. We worked this area pitching by small grassy cuts with the Slammer and the bite was pretty good. I didn't weigh many fish, but I wound up getting 6 more Slammer fish here from 3 to 4 and a half pounds. The key was to plop the bait down as close as possible to the cover and then rip it and twitch it on top. They were bashing it, it was fun. Sid got a Slammer rigged up and he got two decent ones on this same program. This was probably the most fun bite for me of the trip. I had one 4lber try to bash my plug just inches from the trolling motor too which was cool.

Back at the dock the Georgia boys had got another one over 10, and Mike and Rich had a pretty good bite going again on 3/4oz traps and some topwater with a couple 7's. Sid had the big fish of the day with his 8-8 on the blade in the morning. Mark and his Dad had found a creek channel bite in the afternoon that had produced four 6lbers on traps and lizards.

Day 3: Day 3 we fished flats again in the morning, close the boat docks. Fish were busting on the shore but they were mostly small again. I caught a couple 3's, one on a spook, one on a chugger, and one Slammer fish and one 2lber on a rattle trap. The topwater fish were all caught by casting to fish that were swirling and busting the talapia up on the shore. After the morning bite, it really shut off. We couldn't get a darn thing before lunch.

At lunch, Mike and Rich had got on their topwater bank again and Rich had busted an 11-8 on a big chartreuse chugger. If you're getting the feeling that the bite was water dependent, you're right. Having a guide who had some good water was the key to getting on the fish. The Georgia guys had a 12.

After lunch, I was hoping for a repeat of the Slammer bite. The water had come down though and had been dropping the entire trip. This seemed to move the fish out of the cuts and shallow grass and we couldn't find that bite again. We tried to get the guide to take us to some creek channel stuff, but the one we went too didn't seem to be holding fish. We bounced around to some deep trees and Sid caught several dinks drop shotting a purple worm. I finally caught my only deep fish of any size on a 5/8oz brown/copper King Kobra jig with an 8" lizard on the back. It was a 3lber or so. We finished up the day on some shallow topwater banks and Sid started nailing them left and right on an old rebel pop-r. He probably caught 15 in the last hour, but most were dinks with a few 2 to 3 and a half pounders mixed in. I tried for a big bite but all I got was one 5 that exploded on my Slammer right as I lifted it out of the water and missed.

One more thing to mention was the nets. Yes, in Mexico they use gill nets in freshwater to catch these big tilapia. The nets multiplied each day to the point where it was really pretty bad. I would say that there were probably 5000 nets on the lake by the last day. Each net is 75 to 500 feet long and runs from the surface down to about 10 feet. I don't think the guys are after bass on purpose but they certainly do get caught in the nets. We saw several guys pull dead bass out of nets, and in several spots there were small piles of dead bass on the shore. The consensus of everyone I talked to was that El Salto is on the way out, between the pressure of 10 to 40 bass fishing boats per day and the thousands of nets, the fish are feeling the pressure bad. This is not to say that lots of big bass aren't going to come out of the lake, but it just seemed like the lake was probably on the backside of it's peak.

I want to also say thanks to everyone who helped me out for this trip. Mike Kennedy & WON Bass, Mike Shaw & MS Slammer, nosehookrook, socalfrogger, & Shimano, Butch Chapman & Assalt, CJ & Bass World West, Scott Whitmer & Whitmer's No-Name Worms, and everyone else I bugged for info :)


Here are some pics

6-8 on the 9" Slammer
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/6-8.jpg

5-11 on the 9" Slammer
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/5-11.jpg

4-10 on a 7" fin-s-fish
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/4-10.jpg

4-10 on the 9" Slammer - good view of the hyacinth cover that held fish
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/4-10_2.jpg

The docks/lunch building
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/lodge.jpg

Mike and Rich fishing the evening bite with Sierra Madre's in the background
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/kennedy.jpg

Here is the infamous tilapia baitfish. They ranged from micro sized fry to dinner plate sized ones. This is the size that the bass were pushing up on the shore. Since there were thousands around the dock, I snagged one for a pic. Sid caught one that was a pound and a half on a spinnerbait.
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/tilapia.jpg

Here's a dead bass thrown on the shore by the netters. This fish was about 7lbs. Most of what we saw was 2 and 3lbers.
http://www.calfishing.com/images/el_salto/dead_bass.jpg


-Rob