More Mazatlán Flights for Minnesotans

It’s always surprised me that so many of the anglers at Lake El Salto and Lake Picachos come from Texas, Arizona and California. While the route to get there may be shorter, they can fish at home year-round. Why isn’t a larger percentage of visitors from the states where things don’t thaw out until about April? Don’t they want to feed their bass fishing appetite during the winter?

Part of the reason may the perceived difficulty in getting there. The flight schedules have always been a little bit wonky for connections, especially for those whose primary carrier is Delta, and post-Covid things seemed to get a little tougher.

One bright spot in that universe for northern anglers was Sun Country, which provides four flights a week between MSP and MZT.

Now Delta will also offer direct flights from Minneapolis to Mazatlán and back three times a week, starting December 21st. It’s part of a broader expansion of their routes to warm-weather destinations. These routes will be operated by the Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which features 160 total seats and will occur on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays.

At the very least, this creates more capacity for those of you headed south from the Twin Cities and other regional airports throughout the Norris Division. Ideally, it will also create some downward pressure in terms of price.

Also, for those of you traveling with rods, this is likely good news, because Delta’s policy allows for tubes up to 115 linear inches. Sometimes such options are limited by plane size, but that shouldn’t be an issue with a 737. Sun Country, by contrast, is less clear: “One item of fishing equipment consists of: two rods up to six feet in length, two reels, one landing net, one pair of fishing boots (properly encased), and one fishing tackle box.”