Fishing in Punta Mita: What Is Running, Month by Month

It is ten past six and still dark enough to need the torch on your phone to find the gate. The boat is idling at the end of the pier with its lights on and a man you have not met is stowing a cooler. Nobody in your group has said anything more complicated than morning yet. Forty minutes later the sun comes up over the Sierra Madre behind you, the water goes from grey to blue in about a minute, and the first rod goes off.

That is the argument for fishing here, and it has nothing to do with the size of what you catch.

What is actually out there

The Riviera Nayarit tourism board is unusually specific. Across the region it names amberjack, blue marlin, striped marlin, mahi mahi, sailfish, bass, yellowfin tuna, snapper and wahoo, and says pargo and crevalle jack can be caught year round.

For this peninsula in particular it narrows it: yellowfin tuna is the most common catch, with amberjack, roosterfish and small pargo alongside. That is useful, because tuna is the fish you most want coming back to a house with a kitchen in it.

The board also records that two Mexican records were set in these waters — a 184-pound wahoo and a 709-pound marlin. Make of that what you like; most mornings produce dinner rather than a record.

Month by month, from the board's own calendar

• January to March — mahi mahi, crevalle jack, sailfish, wahoo
• April to June — amberjack, grouper, crevalle jack, snapper, yellowfin tuna, mackerel, sailfish
• July to September — mahi mahi, grouper, black, blue and striped marlin, roosterfish, sailfish, tuna, wahoo
• October to December — mahi mahi, sailfish, yellowfin tuna, wahoo, black, blue and striped marlin

The headline is the board's own: the fishing here is year round. There is no closed season to plan around and no month that is a write-off. What changes is what is running, and the summer quarter is the one the marlin people come for.

Where you go out from

The marina in the village — the board calls it a quaint marina, which it is — sits just outside the gate at Punta de Mita, a short drive from most of our houses. That is the short start.

The other option is further round the bay, where the big sportfishers are based and where you go if you are serious about the offshore marks. The board mentions Roca Corbeteña, sixteen miles out from Bucerías, as the one worth the run. It is a long day and it is not the day for children.

The hours, which nobody warns you about

Fishing starts early and it is not negotiable, because the fish do not read schedules and the wind gets up here by the middle of the morning.

A half day means leaving around six and being back for a late breakfast, and it is the right size of trip for most groups — inshore, plenty of bites, nobody questioning their decisions. A full day means out before light and back in the middle of the afternoon, further out, fewer fish and bigger ones. Decide which one you actually want before somebody books the romantic version.

If anyone in the group is unsure about boats, do the half day and sit them at the back where the movement is least.

Which boat

The house manager arranges it, and that is the easiest route — they know which skippers turn up on time and which ones put children at ease, which is not a thing you can read off a website.

If the group is larger, or if half of you want to fish and half want to swim, a yacht for the day solves it: rods off the back, a swim stop at the islands on the way home, and lunch aboard. It costs what it costs and we will tell you that on the phone rather than here.

The best part is back at the house

The board describes a typical trip here ending with a local restaurant cooking your catch. That is true and it is lovely.

But if your house has the chef in the rate — and seventy-five of our hundred and twenty-eight Punta Mita houses do — then it happens at your own table instead. You hand over a tuna at eleven in the morning and at eight that evening there is sashimi, then the loin seared, then tacos with what is left, for nine people, on the terrace.

Casa Koko inside the gates runs a professional chef, a sous-chef and a kitchen assistant from nine until nine, which is the kind of kitchen that takes a whole fish without blinking. Outside the gate, Casa Maka at El Farallón does breakfast, lunch and dinner for sixteen and is five minutes from the boats.

Start with our fully staffed houses in Punta Mita and tell Rocío you want to fish, because she will put you in a house with a kitchen that wants the fish back.