Top Ten Baja Travel Tips - #4 and #3

Tip #4: Take some down time.

As much as you might wish to, you can’t fish every minute. Sucks, I know, but you can’t. Or at least you shouldn’t. You’re doing this for fun, remember, and it seems a shame to get burned out on it. Gives fun a bad name.

Now the weather often takes care of such things for you - wind, rain, frogs and locust - but when you find yourself in paradise and the meteorological gods smile down on upon you, you don’t always get that needed intervention. So, in the event of catastrophically perfect conditions, resist the temptation to cast ‘till you drop. Give the water, and yourself, a break every now and again.

As I tire my stroke starts falling apart and I begin to be a danger to myself and those around me. It's probably difficult for others to recognize the difference (my stroke always looks that bad), but I certainly feel it. So taking a break keeps me a little safer and prevents the repetition of bad habits. At least casting ones.

But, of course, if you’re supposed to be blogging about your trip and you’re staunchly committed to both of your loyal readers to experience and report back non-stop fly fishing exploits, putting the rods aside for an afternoon and settling into a hammock with a cold beer or dog-paddling about poolside with a high-octane fruity libation can make you feel awfully guilty.

Oh hell. Even I don’t buy that.

Barkeep!

Tip #3: Don’t waste valuable fishing time looking for stuff.

We spent way too much time and energy searching for misplaced articles. Wallets, sunglasses, room and car keys, spools of 30lb hard mono, cell phones, reels, laptop chargers, purloined coconuts. It was maddening.

For those of us with a few years under our belts, this is an everyday problem; the most effective solution to which is putting things away in the same place every time. This breaks down, however, when two fishermen are dropped into a location with no “same places” and the contents or their overstuffed duffels quickly expand to fill the allotted living space. It gets ugly fast.

Stuff gets lost in the expansion and subsequent reshuffling. There’s even a mathematical formula for it.

G = (Ix$xT²x(P+1)) – ½F

Where:

G = Gone factor
I = Importance of the item
$ = Replacement cost of the item
T = Shots of tequila consumed immediately before search
P = Number of people waiting for the item to be found before they can go fishing
F = Quantity of F-bombs dropped during the search

When the Gone factor exceeds one-thousand (or ten times the ambient air temperature, whichever is higher) your only hope of seeing the item again is if it has a hook in it. If it does, don't worry. Regardless of the G, you can be assured that it'll turn up. When you least expect it. Painfully.

Note: There’s some difference of opinion in the statistical community regarding the true effect of the mitigating variable F, but all do agree that it tends to make you feel better.

Sadly, there is no viable solution for this vexing misplacement problem.

We fishermen are slobs.