I have been on some great fishing trips in my life to places most fishermen from Lexington, N.C., never have a chance to go — Lake Guntersville. Lake Okeechobee. Kentucky Lake. Toledo Bend. Sam Rayburn. I’m here to tell you that I’ve never been anywhere like the trip I took during April to El Salto Lake in Mexico.
I went down there with Lynn Reeves of Bass Pro Shops to fish for three days and work on a bait-casting reel they make especially for fishing crankbaits I endorse.
We really put those reels through a workout. That is, if you call catching almost 150 fish in a half-day “working” on ’em.
It was unbelievable.
Reeves has a membership at the Anglers Inn at Lake El Salto, which is in western Mexico in the state of Sinaloa, about 50 miles north of Mazatlan. That’s where I flew into from Houston after flying to Texas from Greensboro. The place is owned by Billy Chapman Jr., a guy from Pennsylvania who discovered the lake during a trip with his mother, who had married a Mexican man.
He’s built a really nice place — great food every night, nice rooms and showers, everything you could ask for — and it’s right beside the lake. Fishermen who stay there fish out of nice boats — Rangers or Tritons for the people who have memberships or aluminum Bass Trackers for everybody else.
The guides are locals who have grown up at the lake, and they really know where the fish are.
Of course, it seemed to me the fish were just about everywhere.
The lake spreads across about 24,000 acres, is 500 feet above sea level in the Sierra Madre mountains and 50 miles inland from the Pacific coast and Mazatlan. El Salto, which is about halfway between Mazatlan and Durango, was formed when the Elota River Dam was closed in 1986.
But when we fished, it was drawn down about 15 feet, so it really fished much smaller. It’s used totally to provide irrigation for area farmers.
It’s fairly deep — I think the brochure said it was 225 feet deep at the dam — and it didn’t really remind me of anywhere I’d ever fished before.
You’re out west; there are mountains all around; the lake has a lot of standing timber, bluff banks and several big creeks.
The structure reminded me a little of Buggs Island — with a lot of long points and bluff banks and big flats. But the water reminded me a lot of High Rock — it had almost an identical stain. You could see about a foot down.
They told me it gets clearer later in the year when they quit pulling water for the irrigation.
But the way we caught fish, it didn’t remind me of anywhere I’d ever fished. The last day we were at El Salto, I caught seven bass that weighed more than 8 pounds and three that went more than 9 pounds.
That afternoon we were in one of the bigger boats, and I got to run the trolling motor. Between the two of us, we caught 136 bass. I caught 76, and I know at least 40 were 5-pounders. We quit weighing fish if we didn’t think they were close to 8 pounds, and I know we caught a ton of 7-pound fish.
There was these two little ol’ spots I found, and before we left one of them, I had caught 16 bass, and I’ll bet 15 of them were 6 pounds or better. It was a good fish on just about every cast.
We were fishing anywhere from the bank to 12 feet of water. I caught an 8-pounder on my first cast the first morning on a Zoom Fluke with a spinner. But most of the time, we were fishing crankbaits, either a Rapala DT-10 or a DT-14 in blue/chartreuse or blue/pearl. Those are good postspawn colors anywhere, and most of the fish we were catching were postspawn.
The spawn occurs at El Salto during January and February. December is a great prespawn month. May and June are supposed to be the best months to fish a crankbait, and September is the best topwater month.
In all honesty, I think you could catch fish using just about anything in your tackle box. I fished one day with a guy from Korea who was fishing a Senko rigged wacky-style on a red jig head and he caught fish.
During an average-to-not-so-good afternoon, you could catch 20 or 30 fish. There are plenty of days when you can catch 70 or 80.
The thing about the trip Reeves and I took is there were just so many big fish. It was hard to believe, but just about every time you threw, you’d catch a fish between 5 and 9 pounds.
That doesn’t happen anymore around here.
El Salto is stocked with big Florida-strain largemouths. It used to be considered a lake where you could catch big numbers of bass but not the trophy fish like you heard about from some other lakes in Mexico. But over the past two or three years, it’s developed into a lake that’s considered the best trophy lake anywhere in terms of the number of big fish being caught.
The people there told me it’s not uncommon to catch five 10-pounders during a three-day trip in May, June or September.
There isn’t much fishing pressure. We saw a few boats, but most of them were from Chapman’s place, which is a great place to relax.
You can get up, fish in the morning, come back for lunch, then go back and fish in the afternoon and come back for dinner. It was as nice a place as I’ve ever been to fish.
If I were going down there again — and I will probably take my son, Thomas, when he gets a little older — I would take spinnerbaits to slow roll, lots of Flukes and big Zoom worms, and crankbaits. And I’d make sure I took plenty of heavy line. I was cranking with 10-pound test, and I had one fish break me off.
I’m get excited just thinking about it. It’s pretty hard to believe that bass fishing can be as good as it is down there.
Editor’s note: David Fritts is a 49-year-old professional bass fisherman from Lexington. He was the 1993 BASS Masters Classic champion, the 1993-94 BASS Angler of the Year and the 1997 FLW Tour Champion. His sponsors include: Bass Pro Shops, Evinrude Motors, Ranger Boats, Chevy Trucks, Minn-Kota trolling motors, American Rodsmith, Rapala crankbaits and fishing line, Zoom plastics, Solar Bat sun glasses, Mountain Dew, Gripper (ECS Anchor Supply), VMC hooks, Pro Pocket and Blue Fox.
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