Lake El Salto Fishing Report – June 2024
One or both of us have traveled to Anglers Inn Lake El Salto every May or June since 2013, but this year’s trip was the latest in the season – we were there from June 22 through June 29. That’s the cusp of the period when the annual rains typically start after a long, dry spring. True to form, the first rain came two days before we arrived and it rained at least a little bit every day during our stay.
The only time the rain hampered our ability to fish was on our last morning when overnight lightning delayed our takeoff from the normal 5am until about 5:20am. That day happened to produce the best topwater bite of the trip – and perhaps the best that we’ve ever seen in 20 or so trips to El Salto, so it was very much worth the wait.
The advantage of the cloud cover was that it kept things cool and generally comfortable. Normally at this time of year it gets a little sweaty by about 9am while you wait for the winds to start up and blow through the afternoon. This time around there was very little sweating, which was good because the wind did not blow as hard or as consistently as in prior years.
Quality Bites
Numbers of fish were good but not great by El Salto standards. Hanna and I probably caught between 40-70 fish most days. One afternoon I went out with our friend Roy Reid and we caught 25 fish on swimbaits and (mostly) crankbaits in the first half hour off of a single spot. I’m sure that if we’d stayed there we could have caught 100 or more, but they seemed to be mostly in the 1- to 3-pound class so we left to hunt for bigger bass.
While the numbers may have been average, the quality of the fish was perhaps the best that I’ve seen in all of my times in Mexico. I’d conservatively say that the vast majority of bass were over 3 pounds, and I believe that at least half were over 4 pounds. Five-pounders became routine and just about every boat caught multiple fish over 6 pounds every session, with a solid smattering of sevens and eights and a handful of nines. No one in our group caught a 10, although the “brag board” at the lodge reported several. I can’t comment on their veracity, but I will say that we weighed every fish over 6 on an accurate scale with both the clients and the guides watching the readout.
No doubt this surge in quality was helped by a couple of high water fall/winter periods, and the incredible amount of bait in the lake – not just tilapia and mojarra, but also ample numbers of shad. Indeed, the amount of life in the lake is incredibly high, and the amount of moving bait pods and feeding bass was at times distracting.
The Fishing Day
Because we arrived just after the longest day of the year, the fishing day was skewed from what we’ve grown to expect. Wake up calls came early, and breakfast service started at 4:30am, unless you preferred burritos packed in the boat. We were fishing by 5am, off the water by 10 or so, ate lunch at 11 and then took a siesta. We usually started fishing again shortly before 2 and stayed out until approximately 6. The afternoons produced more rain than the mornings, although never enough to be uncomfortable with a light rain jacket.
The Bite
Typically this time of year we expect to crank, throw a swimbait and big worm. Anything else is kind of a bonus. The goal is to chase bigger bites and then several times a day time it right to hit a “hammer hole” or three where you get bit just about every cast.
With the changing conditions upon our arrival, you could see that in some cases the guides were still making their milk runs, hitting their dry season spots. This worked reasonably well, but it wasn’t easy. The cloud cover and rain changed the position and the attitude of the fish. Our worst session came after a heavy all-night rainstorm that produced lots of thunder and lightning. Either our timing was off or the fish reacted negatively to the craziness.
Most of the bass we caught were in the 12 to 20 foot range. It took a while for several of the guides to decide to spend some time shallow. We’ve had May/June trips when there was zero topwater bite for us, but this time around we had some of the best topwater days we’ve ever experienced.
Part of the “trouble” with an incredibly productive lake like El Salto is that any spot you pull up on that fits a current pattern is likely to produce a good fish or two, sometimes almost immediately. The decision is whether to wait out more and/or bigger bites. The guides are often more patient than the gringos on vacation – sometimes it pays off, sometimes it does not.
Keeping it Simple
If you’ve read some my past El Salto trip planning columns, you know that I like to experiment with new lures on every trip. I call it the “80/20 rule” – use proven winners 80 percent of the time and try new stuff during the remaining periods. That gives me opportunities to find new gems without letting the day get away from me.
On this trip I did very, very little experimentation. I had some good sessions with the new Yamamoto 10” Ichi Worm, but I don’t really count that since a 10” worm was already a standard in my arsenal.
The one really fun new bite that we found was on that last morning, when Hanna absolutely wrecked fish up to 6 pounds on crawler baits – in particular a Megabass I Wing 135 and a Deps NZ Crawler. More on that is coming soon.
[Tomorrow I’ll run down a full list of the lures that produced for us.]
Notes
As expected the water was at its lowest point of the year, lower than last year but not even close to the lowest we’ve ever seen. That gave us plenty of room to spread out, and enough water that we didn’t have to make the same milk run day after day after day.
One key pattern was tree lines at the end of points or humps that abutted the river channel. We used big worms, jigs, swimbaits and crankbaits. Sometimes the fish related directly to the trees – one morning my friend Marc Shoenfelt dialed in the worm bite exceptionally on a set of interior cover, and the last afternoon our guide moved me and Hanna into the trees and we caught a ton of bass, mostly on jerkbaits.
More than any other trip I’ve been on, the pause in your retrieve was essential. They day I fished with Roy Reid and we whacked ‘em on a Strike King 6XD, every bite came on the pause. The same held true with topwaters – even some of my Whopper Plopper bites came when I left it in place for extended periods.
One guide told me that he’d recently caught multiple fish loaded with eggs. He’s been extremely reliable and truthful over the years and I believe him. It also reinforces my belief that anyone who tells you they know exactly when the spawn happens down there doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. I suspect it is a rolling process.
Throwing the Strike King 10XD is usually one of my main tools this time of year but I never made a cast with it. Hanna threw it a few times and I threw an 8XD a bit – and we both caught fish on them, but I’d venture to guess that a 6XD and a Berkley Dredger 20.5 produced more than 80 percent of our crankbait catches.
I never fished a Rico, either, although Hanna did. This time around I relied heavily on a Reaction Innovations Vixen.
The first Whopper Plopper 130 I purchased – back in 2015 or so – finally died after hundreds of fish and some of the most memorable strikes of my life. On the last morning, after catching a few fish on it, I noticed that on the pause it would sink, due to being waterlogged.
I wish I had thrown a flutter spoon a bit. In hindsight there were several times I believe it would’ve worked well.
As noted above, more coming on the specific lures we used TOMORROW.
