Sierra’s in the Surf 4

"Amigo, that's the black butterfly…lot's of people say it's bad luck mang!" The hotel concierge noticed that a brown, not a black, butterfly was crawling on my hand the night of our arrival in Cabo San Lucas and just had to mention this little trollip of good news. The Brady Bunch "Tiki Idol" episode snapped onto the mental video screen…you know, the one where Bobby finds a Tiki on a construction site and brings it back to the family condo, dooming the family vacation with bad luck. 

Nu-uh! The butterfly was definitely brown and the concierge was definitely blind, probably from an older brother that made him stare at the sun when he was little after losing a match of Paper-Rock-Scissors. I couldn't help but wonder how that darned bug was going to effect my surf fishing the next few days though.  

After a combined 6 hours of casting a 15 foot surf rod in search of the regal and grand roosterfish the next morning I plopped down next to Nicole in the sand, who was sound asleep in the sun, and gazed off into the wild bluewater yonder. Convinced that the bug had ruined my chances of catching a roosterfish I was officially done, sort of.

A swell from an inside set was arching its back just short of the beach when I saw it, a roosterfish, zipping thru the wave. In a blink I grabbed the 38 pound rod, or so it felt, and raced into the surf, rocketing the Ranger as far as I could send it offshore. One, two, three casts and WHAMO! A roosterfish I'm guess-timating at 25 pounds slammed the Ranger and went airborne. The fin, the stripes, everything was there. It thrashed around on the surface for another ten seconds, made a short run, and spit the hook. That damned bug!

I limped into Jansen Lures in Cabo the next day and told Stephen Jansen, the owner, my story. He quickly pointed me to a beach on Google Earth that was about 15 kilometers north of Cabo and talked of a "wide open" bite for sierra mackeral the day before. There were some huge roosterfish in there, as well, and if you let your sierra swim around long enough there was a good chance of hooking one. Sounded like a good plan to me!

Vacationing in Cabo for Christmas was one thing, but fishing on Christmas day…saweeet! We hit the beach at just after sunup and shor-nuf, there was already a stack of sierra's forming behind the thirty or so surf casters that were hammering away at an unseen school of mack's within casting range. The program was pretty simple really. Huck a Krocodile spoon, diamond jig, or anything else shiny as far out as you could and then crank like mad. Everything in the bluewater swims 50 mph and sierra are no different.

The bite was a here-and-there deal for around an hour until a huge school of mackeral boiled up to the surface off the point. Everyone, including me, bolted to the corner of the beach and launched every sort of lure into the school. Hookups occured the instant the lures hit the water and mackeral were sliding up the sand left and right until the school sounded again and disappeared. One fellow, a Canadian named Kenny, was hooking a fish, and sometimes two, on every single cast. 

I'm sure this went on for most of the day, but we pulled the plug after a couple hours of madness and headed off to the beach where I had hooked the roosterfish two days earlier. No roosters were in sight and I quickly dismantled my travel surf rod and called it quits. The brown butterfly had gotten to the rooster-feesh, but thankfully the macks had slipped by unnoticed. Christmas day on a remote beach in Mexico and sierra for Christmas din-din back at the condo. Saweet!