Presa Humaya

Presa Adolfo López Mateos, known to everyone as the Humaya dam or El Varejonal, impounds the Humaya River about 32 km north of Culiacán, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre on the border of the Badiraguato and Culiacán municipalities. It can hold 3,087 million cubic meters over some 11,340 hectares, making it the largest reservoir in Sinaloa and one of the ten biggest in Mexico. Its water irrigates more than 100,000 hectares of the Culiacán, Pericos, Guamúchil and Angostura valleys.

A dam on the Humaya was planned soon after the Revolution, with surveys in 1929 and 1930, but construction only began in 1957 under engineer Carlos Carvajal Zarazúa. President Adolfo López Mateos opened it as the Humaya dam; the state governor, Leopoldo Sánchez Celis, later announced that local farmers had chosen to name it after the president. The rockfill embankment stands 106.5 m high and 750 m long, while the spillway sits about 8 km away at a saddle called La Chutama. A 90-megawatt power plant came online in 1976.

Bass anglers know it as Lake Mateos. From the late 1980s into the early 1990s it ranked among Mexico's top largemouth lakes, then in 1994 most of its water was drawn down for agriculture and the fishery collapsed. It recovered enough for a US fishing outfitter to open a lodge on the Humaya River, about 45 minutes by road from Culiacán's airport. The lake is ringed by rock walls around 20 m high and the water is very clear. Tilapia and catfish are caught too, and the brush around it holds deer, wild turkey, dove and quail, which draws hunters.

Check the level before going: in early April 2026 the reservoir was at 12.7 percent of capacity, one of its lowest readings of the farming cycle.