| MirrOlure
111MR colors, left to right: firetiger, blue mackerel, hot pink,
orange-gold. |
| The
MirrOlure 111MR is the undisputed heavyweight champion of Baja inshore
trolling lures. Smaller plugs -- Rebels and 14-cm Rapalas -- catch more
fish, but MirrOlures catch more big fish. The San Felipe mothership
outfits use them so much they keep a stock of them onboard to sell to
passengers. Drag them over reefs in the Cortez for leopard and gulf grouper and big snapper types, and in the Pacific for broomtails, black seabass and leopard grouper. We've caught a few yellowtail on MirrOlures over the years, but maybe we're just not trying hard enough; other people say they catch lots of 'tails on them. We like MirrOlures for several reasons. First, they catch a lot of fish. Maybe the action is better than other plugs, or maybe it's just that they dive deeper than most other plugs of similar size -- as deep as 25 or 30 feet. The Mann's Stretch series is another good deep-diving choice, but Rapalas and Yo-Zuris don't come close. The fact that MirrOlures run true at higher speeds may also have something to do with their fish-catching ability. Although Kelly and Kira recommend trolling plugs as slow as the boat will go, we think trolling big plugs at a good four or five knots draws strikes from the bigger, wiser reef fish. They see a big meal getting away and don't have time to think it over. At any rate, MirrOlures stay down and run straight up to around 6 knots. Second, MirrOlures are super-tough. The thick plastic lip doesn't break or deflect, no matter how many rocks you smash it into at 5 knots. Unlike lures with metal lips, MirrOlures need no tuning to run true. (Incidentally, MirrOlure's 113MR is the same body as the 111MR but with a shallower-running metal lip. We've done very well with it, too.) MirrOlures also have an extremely durable finish. Third, MirrOlures are cheap -- well, relatively speaking at least. Rapala's CDMAG 18 is a buck or two more and Yo-Zuri's 7" Hydro Mag is almost twice as much. Troll these lures on at least 30-lb. tackle. Not only will you need it to turn big bass types in shallow water, but the lures themselves put a lot of stress on your tackle when trolled at 4+ knots. We start with bright colors for Cortez reef-dwellers and blue mackerel for Pacific inshore and for yellowtail anywhere. As Kira and Kelly observed, day-glo orange with gold is for some reason an excellent combination in the Cortez. |
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MirrOlure 111MR $11.00 each $9.00 OUT 
|
Rebel Jointed Fastracs
| Rebel
Fastrac colors and sizes, top to bottom: black-silver 4-1/2",
blue-silver 5-1/2". |
| The
use of Rebel Jointed Fastrac plugs for Baja fishing was popularized in
1988 when Neil Kelly and Gene Kira's classic book The Baja Catch was first published.
Kelly and Kira said the 4-1/2" Rebel was the single most effective lure
for Baja fishing and that jointed Rebels were the way to go for 90% of
Baja's shallow-water fishing. The plugs haven't changed a bit in the intervening 20 years, and they remain absolutely deadly for inshore trolling. They'll catch all the usual inshore suspects of the Cortez--leopard grouper, barred pargo, yellow snapper, spotties, corvina, barracuda, sierra, etc.--plus halibut, corvina, spotties, cabrilla and so on in the Pacific esteros. Triggerfish love them too, which is problematic, since triggers absolutely mangle the Rebels' wimpy freshwater-grade hooks. In truth, we use Rebels mainly for open water fish--particularly sierra, corvina, pompano, small roosters and other small jacks--and not much for reef fish. Why? Unfortunately, the fishing just isn't as good in Baja as it was when Kelly and Kira were fishing together. There are fewer reef residents around, and those that remain aren't nearly as willing to blast up recklessly off a 30-foot bottom and eat a Fastrac swimming 6 feet below the surface. We simply catch more reef fish with deeper-running lures. Instead of the deeper-diving version of the Fastrac known as the Spoonbill, we go to a 14-cm Rapala (below) if we want to run something that dives a little deeper than a Fastrac. We believe the Rapalas get bit just as much as the Rebels, and they're much more able to survive attacks from the bigger reef fish. Blue-silver and black-silver are, in our opinion, nearly interchangeable, although blue-silver seems, as Kelly and Kira observed, to appeal particularly to sierra. Black-gold and orange-gold are back-ordered at our supplier, but they're coming. The choice between 4-1/2" and 5-1/2" depends mainly on your quarry. In our experience, the structure-oriented ambush predators are turned on by bigger meals, while the open water types like smaller bites. |
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Rebel 4-1/2" Jointed Fastrac $6.00 each OUT |
| |
Rebel 5-1/2" Jointed Fastrac $6.50 each $5.00 (ship weight .10 lbs.) Out of blue-silver. Six black-silver left. |
Rapala Magnums
| Rapala
Magnum colors and sizes, left to right: CD-14 blue mackerel, CD-14
green mackerel, CD-14 firetiger, CD-11 sardine, CD-11 purple mackerel. |
| Rapala Magnum CD-14s bridge the
gap for inshore trolling between big, deep-running, bullet-proof
MirrOlures and small, shallow-running, lightly constructed Rebel
Fastracs. As noted above, we use Rebels mainly for open-water species
like sierra and corvina, while MirrOlures are big enough that they
discourage strikes from lots of smaller fish. They also run so deep
they can't be trolled in less than about 20 feet of water without
hanging up a lot. The good old CD-14 MAG, though, is juuust right for many of the mid-sized reef-dwellers of the Cortez and southern Pacific side. It runs at 12 to 18 feet, at 5-1/2" it's not big enough to discourage many strikes, and it's built strongly enough to withstand attacks from triggerfish and pargo. We also use CD-14 MAGs a lot when trolling the deep holes in the Mag Bay esteros for snook and mid-sized broomtails, and some people like dragging them for dorado. Bonito can't resist them, and big calicos along the central Pacific coast will eat them too. The CD-14 MAG has two shortcomings. First, the metal diving lip can get tweaked when it hits rocks, and then you have to fiddle around bending it to get the lure to swim straight again. That sucks, but the only real alternatives we've found cost a lot more; the plastic-lipped Yo-Zuri Hydro Magnum, for example, is a great lure but costs about 70% more. Second, Rapala Magnums sink, which means you have to wind them in quickly if you stop the boat for a snag or a fish in shallow water. Rebels and MirrOlures float, so you can just leave them out while you get another lure unsnagged or release a little fish, but Rapalas will sink right into the rocks. Again, it's a pain, but we still think this is the best lure value of its type. Firetiger has been a very good color for us, both in the esteros and on the reefs. Green mack reportedly works well for dorado, and blue mack catches a lot of sierra. We've also picked up a number of surprise yellowtail on blue and green mack CD-14s. Orange-gold, another versatile color, is coming soon. We use the smaller 4-3/8" CD-11 MAGs almost exclusively for offshore trolling for albacore and yellowfin. Inshore, if we want something smaller or shallower than a CD-14, we go to a Rebel. But offshore, the little CD-11s can be a deadly addition to your trolling spread. We run them fairly close to the boat on one or both of the inboard lines, with the idea that fish below will see them silhouetted against the white prop wash above. Who knows if that's true, but we get lots of albies that way regardless. We start with purple mackerel, but the very realistic sardine pattern sometimes seems to work better in the Pacific. |
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Rapala CD-14 MAG $10.00 each $8.50 (ship weight .15 lbs.) Out except one green mack. |
| |
Rapala CD-11 MAG $9.50 each OUT |
Rapala X-Rap Magnums
| Rapala
X-Rap Magnum 30 colors left to right: blue mackerel, bonito,
black-silver, green mackerel. |
| With
X-Raps, we're violating our rule about selling only what we use
ourselves. But we've heard so much about how well they catch
Pacific-side yellowtail--Juan Arce in Asuncion, for instance, says
X-Raps are his top yellowtail producers--that we decided to go ahead
and bring them in untested. The XRMAG30, with a 6-1/4" body, falls between the 5-1/2" CD-14 MAG and the 6-3/4" MirrOlure. It's got a thick plastic lip like the MirrOlure so no tuning is necessary, and Rapala claims it runs 20 to 30 feet down and tracks straight even at offshore trolling speeds. The finish certainly looks good with a translucent outer "skin" over a prismatic scale-textured surface beneath, and the blue mackerel pattern is the most realistic imitation of a Pacific (aka greenback) mackerel we've ever seen. |
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Rapala XRMAG30 $16.00 each $13.00 (ship weight .20 lbs.) Two of each color left. |
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