My fishing partner and I have been to Salto in June and Comedero in November. I'm a swimbait guy...he's a tournament/finesse/numbers guy so this time we are going to Picachos. I don't mind going to a "numbers" lake because we intend to fish all the Mexico lakes but I'm really not interested on catching 100+ small fish a day. My question is...has anyone gone to Picachos and targeted larger bass. I'm sure those smaller bass are fun to catch, but there's no way there aren't big fish in that lake. I know how I intend to fish for them but I would appreciate information/ideas from anyone who has been there in late January and specifically targeted the larger fish. I'm not sure if it matters but we'll be fishing with Ron Speed's outfit.

Just got back not too long ago. For the bigger fish plan some tackle for fishing 25ft. plus deep. 1 oz jigs, heavy Texas Rigs, and Carolina rigs, 1 oz spinner baits, heavy rattle traps, 6 and 8XDS. We Texas rigged a lot of Senkos(get the big 30 packs of the BPS ones, you will go through a lot of them) and Mag Lizards in any color you like so long as it is Watermelon Red. You will want some topwaters for the first hour of the day, buzz baits caught bigger fish, chatterbaits and mag flukes worked too. Use braid or at least 15lb test mono or fluorocarbon. You can tie braid straight to the baits, the fish don't care. The guides will take you to the banks and there are a ton of 1-3 pounders, you will have to tell them you want to target big fish. We had a great time and Ron Speeds was excellent!

Ditto on the deeper water, but you may have to force your guide to get off the bank. When I was there we were fishing a long point when my fishing partner threw the backlash from hell. The guide went back to help him get it picked out and I ran the trolling motor. I moved way away from the bank and got out on the end of the point we had been fishing. It was about 40' deep and I could see some big trees that came up to about 20 foot of the surface. Started dragging a Texas rigged worm through the treetops and started catching 3 - 5 lbers every few minutes. As soon as the guide came back to the front, he started insisting we get back to the bank where all the 15 inchers lived. I should have made him stay out there, but I also knew my fishing partner wasn't very experienced and would struggle with a suspended bite, so back to the bank we went.

Take a bunch of 6 inch Yum Dingers in watermelon/pearl laminate. Those seemed to produce a little better quality overall for us.

any concerns about the 19 there? and were there any problems coming back to USA?

I had zero concerns about the rona. The camp is pretty remote and all the staff were masked up most of the time. Everything was immaculately clean. Our rooms were cleaned/straightened up every time we left. You are masked up in the airports and on the flights. As far as getting back in to the US, there is a temp check when you enter the airport in Mazatlan but that was it as far as covid screening. Keep the little piece of paper that you fill out and they stamp when you go into Mexico, you need that to get back out. Keep it with your passport. My Dad could not read it and did not know what is was so he trashed it. Cost us $30 at the immigration office in the airport for a new one. Other than the fact that there were no direct flights from DFW (we had to go through Phoenix) travel was long but smooth both directions. If you are going prepare for a wonderful experience, we had a great time!!!

Let the lodge manager know what you want to do and he will pair you with the guides that fish that way. You will have a differ guide each day and each one has his spots.

There are risks to anything, but in November we found that the people in MZT are being more careful about COVID than many Americans:

Safety in Mexico -- COVID-19

Good luck. L
I cancelled my annual February trip😬

Thank you for all the information...if anyone else wants to jump in I'd certainly appreciate the additional help.