A trip to Mexico’s El Salto can be a trip of a lifetime, but anglers must be prepared with the right kind of tackle, which means bringing big lures.
By Steven Johnson
“GRANDE!” That’s what every bass fisherman wants to hear his guide exclaim on a trip to Mexico. Grande’ means “big” in Spanish, and bigger the bass, the more emphatic the yell.
My grande bass on my first trip to Mexico weighed in at 10 pounds. It annihilated a frog-colored Excalibur Pop’n Image just before dark. It was the biggest bass I had ever caught, but only one of a couple dozen double-digit largemouths caught and released at El Salto during my three-day stay.
El Salto’s lake record weighed 18 pounds, 8 ounces, but most anglers believe the lake still holds larger fish – possibly world-record.
El Salto covers 25,000 acres in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. Black bass are not native to its watershed, so pure Florida-strain fish from Mexico’s Lake Baccarac were used to stock in the lake, beginning in 1985. Threadfin shad were also stocked in large numbers to supplement natural forage of tilapia and an oversized variety of crawfish.
The lake’s banks are steep, creating plentiful deep-water habitat, but it also has many shallow coves, vast shallow flats and two long river arms. Large stands of flooded timber, many of which cover long points, add fabulous cover, as does water hyacinth.
Fishermen catch bass on a lot of different lures on El Salto, but four types of baits pretty well dominate the scene: Bomber Fat Free Shads, Heddon Super Spooks, and 1-ounce BOOYAH Blade spinnerbaits, and oversized YUM soft-plastics, including 7-inch YUM Dingers, 9-inch Houdini Shads (available this spring), 6-inch G-Shads and 10-inch Ribbontail worms.
Even Mexican guides who speak very little English know how to say “crankbait,” and they will say it repeatedly if the fish are holding deep. If your tackle box contains full-sized Fat Free Shads (especially in Dance’s Citrus Shad), they will almost always pull those out first and tie them to your line. If you don’t bring plenty of Fat Free Shads to El Salto, you will probably buy a few before you go home.
If the bass are on top, which can occur throughout the day during the winter, a Super Spook is easily the favored bait of most guides. When the fish feed shallow but are not hitting topwater, spinnerbaits become the baits of choice for many anglers. Others turn to the big weightless YUM Dingers and Houdini Shads.
Through the last couple months of the season (which wraps up in June), El Salto veterans rely heavily on 10-inch worms, which they fish Texas-rigged off the ends of points. Bring big Ribbontails in several colors, plus plenty of 4/O and 5/O Excalibur Tx3 Wide-Gap hooks and Tg bullet weights of all sizes. The last part of the season also is prime time to rig a big G-Shad on a 1-ounce leadhead and swim is slowly just off the bottom.
To learn more about El Salto and other bass lake in Mexico, check out www.bassmex.com.