The East Cape of Baja is a long, quiet stretch of beach north of Cabo where the desert runs straight down into the Sea of Cortez. The panga fleet goes out every morning from Los Barriles and the charter guys will tell you, correctly, that the easiest way to catch a roosterfish is from a boat with live bait. They are right, and nobody who has ever done it from the beach cares, because a roosterfish caught off the sand on foot is a different animal entirely, even if it is technically the same fish.
The whole thing starts with the comb. A roosterfish carries seven long spines on its back that stand straight up when it is hunting, and in the green wash just past the break you will see them before you see anything else, a row of dark quills cutting the water like a small flag. Then the fish turns, and you catch the flank, silver with black stripes that curve like somebody drew them freehand. Then it is gone, moving down the beach at a pace that makes your plan irrelevant.
Beach fishing for roosters is mostly running. You walk the sand at first light with a spinning rod and a popper, scanning the wash, and when you see a comb you do not cast at it. You run ahead of it, fifty or sixty yards down the beach, in soft sand, in September, and cast in front of where it is going to be. Then you work that popper back as fast as your hands allow, because a roosterfish will follow a slow lure all the way to your boots and then turn away with open contempt. Our guide, a lean local named for a saint he did not much resemble, made us practice the retrieve on dry sand before he would let us near the water.
The first three fish followed and refused. The fourth came off the back of a wave with its comb up and its mouth open and ate the popper in about eight inches of water, then took off parallel to the beach with me in soft sand trying to keep up. Twenty minutes later I was knee deep in the wash with a twenty pound fish in my hands and sand in places that will not be discussed. The guide took one photo, said it was fine, and told me the next one would be bigger.
It was not. We walked four miles of beach and saw eleven combs, hooked two, and landed the one. Back at the truck the guide cracked two cold drinks and pointed out a panga coming in with six roosters on the board. Nobody said anything for a minute. Then he said, generously, that theirs had been easier.
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