The southwestern coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula has long been a hot spot for striped marlin, with the action centered off the sparsely populated region of Magdalena Bay. Located on the Pacific coast, Mag Bay can produce incredible fishing for striped marlin. Chris and Laura Jessen found out just how good it can be during two separate trips there in mid-November 2017, fishing aboard their Hatteras GT63, Fish Tank. Here is Laura’s report from that expedition.
We relocated Fish Tank from our home port in Los Sueños, Costa Rica, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for the tournament season in 2017 and decided to make two trips up the Pacific coast to Mag Bay with Capt. Ben Horning and mates Topher Wightman and Erick Martinez. Both trips were beyond epic; in fact, it was beyond anything we could have imagined.
The first three-day trip, from November 11-13, Chris fished with Kitt Toomey, Peter Miller and Darren Helwig and released a total of 272 striped marlin, three blue marlin and three sailfish. The second venture up the coast was from November 16-19. Six anglers — Chris, me, Thomas Garmany, Jenn Greaney, Blaire Biase and Hunter Carter — fished for three and a half days and released 334 striped marlin, two blue marlin and four sailfish for a grand total of 606 striped marlin, five blues and seven sails in six and a half days of fishing. Our best day was an incredible 125 striped marlin and two blue marlin. Jenn, Blaire and Hunter all learned to hook their own fish on that trip.
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We were warned about how rough it could be there, but we had great weather, with the second trip being flat calm the entire time. The sight of 30 to 40 striped marlin cutting through baitballs on the surface under frigate birds was just insane. We trolled dead baits only, and caught doubles, triples, quads — up to nine at one time. It was once-in-a-lifetime fishing, and I hope to make it back there to experience it again.—Laura Jessen, as told to Sam White
