The Baja Peninsula is a 700-mile-long protection barrier for the Sea of Cortez. After a week’s worth of wind and big surf, I sometimes forget how good our weather is in Puerto Peñasco. Other coastal destinations that have no protection and really get beat up by storms. I have a fly-fishing buddy that visits the Port Mansfield/ Padre Island area to fish for Red Drum and has often not been able to fish for more than a week at a time and has had multiple trips without making a cast.
Puerto Lobos, just a 2-hour drive south of Puerto Peñasco, is on the Sea of Cortez but has no estuaries, islands, or mountains to hide from windstorms. It has only one redeeming quality. The fishing can be fabulous if you can get on the water. No nice hotels, cantinas, or nightlife like Puerto Peñasco. They have Grouper, Yellow Tail, Sierra Mackerel, Dorado…this is a very good place to catch BIG fish!
I fish Puerto Peñasco quite often, and my plans usually include fly fishing out of my kayak. Something I can do now that I am retired is plan for a longer visit. I usually plan to stay 5-10 days, and if I hang around long enough, I usually have more good days of weather than bad. Even when we have wind in Peñasco, you can sometimes find shelter from it at the estuaries or behind the mountain at Cholla Bay.
We are almost done with summer and can look forward to some really lovely weather in October and November, two of my favorite months to fish Puerto Peñasco. These are two good months for weather, temperature, and wind, and the fishing can be spectacular. Hope to see you on the water soon, fishing. If you catch me on Mirador Beach reading Gone with the Wind, it’s probably too windy to fish. Vince Deadmond, the fly-fishing hardware guy, can be reached at vincehasgonefishing@outlook.com or 480 818 1796.
