There’s a new bass fishing lake opening in Mexico. It’s the latest in a long string of fishing spots that have lured American anglers south of the border since largemouth bass ascended to the pinnacle of fishing popularity.
The lake is Picachos, a name that has a nice ring to it. According to an online translation dictionary, Picachos means “peaks,” and the lake does have a view of the mountains north of Mazatlan. Lake Tawakoni fishing guide Jimmy Smith, a longtime friend of Mexico fishing outfitter Ron Speed Jr., went to Picachos for a checkout trip in late January. Speed, who has a website (ronspeedadventures.com), is opening a lodge there.
Smith fished two days and reported using spinnerbaits to catch 93 bass the first day. The second day, he used soft plastics and jigs to land 57 bass.
Success like that is why Americans still fish in Mexico, despite U.S. State Department travel warnings, and probably always will. Smith’s report reminded me of my first Mexico bass fishing trip in 1975 when rumors leaked out about a lake called Guerrero. I was working in Port Arthur at the time.
My friend, Jimmy Olive, heard the rumors. Jimmy was a fishing fanatic who always had an eye out for the next hotspot. I’ve never fished with a better angler. Jimmy had both our ride and lodging arranged via a 28-foot Winnebago from his family’s used car lot.
We loaded up our tackle, and another fishing buddy, Lloyd Godbold, hooked Jimmy’s new Ranger to the Winnebago and headed south, swapping drivers and rolling pretty much nonstop.
What we found, where an old roadbed entered the water at the inundated village of Guerrero, was a bass angler’s dream — a gigantic lake full of hungry bass and almost void of other anglers.
There was one other motor home and four or five tent campers at the only launch site we saw in three days. The lake was full of brush and bass. We had planned to count how many we caught, but that didn’t last long. It was easy enough to catch 100 fish a day if you wanted to work that hard, and we did.
As usual, Jimmy was prepared. He had amassed several used golf gloves from golfing friends. We all wore one glove and used that hand to remove fish. Otherwise, our thumbs would have been worn to the bone. Each glove lasted less than a day before the thumb was worn through. I was 27 years old and may have caught more bass in those three days at Guerrero than I’d caught in my entire life. The big ones weighed six or seven pounds.
Every fishing trip to Mexico should be viewed as an adventure. The adventurous part of our early Guerrero trip really started on the way home. It was dark, and I was driving up Mexico Highway 101 toward Matamoros when I noticed sparks behind the Winnebago.
The support that held the trailer hitch to the left side of the motor home’s undercarriage had come unwelded. We couldn’t call Triple AAA, so we tied the support back in place with a nylon anchor rope. We were about 50 miles from the border when I got back behind the wheel.
About 10 p.m. on Saturday night, I drove into Matamoros with the 28-foot motor home trailing an 18-foot boat that was tied on with a nylon rope. It was a test of nerves and honking horns until we cleared the border.
Jimmy looked in a phone book for a welder and talked the guy into meeting us at midnight. The welder charged $100 to weld the support back into place, and it seemed like a bargain, even in those days.
I’ve caught bigger bass in Mexico, but I’ve never caught as many bass anywhere as we caught in the early days of Guerrero.
