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 here on HST, 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 the rio and 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!
