¡Truchas Mexicanas! A Fish Report

[Fly Guy Dave]

In my ongoing quest to catch as many salmonids as possible, I had my eye on one of the trout that exist south of the border, beyond the “big beautiful wall.” In the course of my research, I came across a fellow native trout fanatic, whose initials are JH. He lives down in the southern part of the state, speaks Spanish and has fished for and has caught the San Pedro Martir trout (a.k.a. Nelson’s Trout or Oncorhynchus mykiss nelsoni) in the past. He wanted to go back again and wanted to explore some of the even more remote parts of the stream, so once I had the opportunity, I packed up my gear, hopped on a plane and met JH and we headed south into Baja Norte.



This doesn’t exactly look like trout country







Lots of interesting flora that I don’t see growing wild very often


After a long, dusty drive we arrived at the river (or rio), packed up our gear and hiked upstream in the blazing sun. It was warm enough in the spring, I wonder how hot it gets in the summer?! After a few miles, we stopped at a pristine section of rio, rigged up with a few terrestrial patterns. It wasn’t long until we were into some nice fish.








The fishing was really good, both of us catching as many of these rare trout as we wanted, all the while enjoying the scenery, the experience and the promise of a cold beer at a nearby oasis.



Here is a section of the water we fished


We fished for one and a half days, caught plenty of trout and had had ourselves a helluva time. We did stay in a hotel one night on the way out and this little guy tried to share the room with me. I was able to capture him in a bandana and set him loose safely outside. Catch and release of a flying mammal!




There are other trout to catch down in Mexico, but they are located in even more remote and hard to get reach places. They will have to wait for another time, but it would be fun to head south again and fish for a new species of salmonid.

Enjoy!

[Sheepdog8404]

What an awesome trip! Super cool that you boys were able to research their watershed and tie into plenty specimens.

[Ralph]

Head for the Copper Canyon/Creel area of Chihuahua. The mountains are remote (access is by 4X4 as far as you can get, and then by backpack or mule) and opportunities are endless for hunting uncommon species of trout. Fantastic place. These creeks flow into the Atlantic and the trout have been separated from Pacific drainage rainbows for thousands of years and evolved into several Mexican goldens and other amazing fish.

[John Sv]

YES!!!!!
Love the native salmonid passion!!!!

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Over the 50 years in spent in the tackle business I heard stories about the southern Pacific coastal streams all the way into Mexico.

I wonder how many of these fish are Steelhead?

Before all the dams there were runs of Steelhead in many short coastal streams from here south to the boarder with Mexico.