We left Thursday 6/19 noonish, arrived in Ensenada Friday around 15:00 for some shopping (keep the wife happy) and dinner. Stayed in a campground in town (new experience, Ensenada is not the real Baja, won't do that again). Drove the next day to San Ignacio 100 km from the sea of Cortez. Slept under the palm trees in the little desert oasis. Drove the next day to San Lucas, 34 hours of drive time, and ended up staying in the campground next door at Comacho's beach campground. Made the rounds through camp asking questions. The fisherman there all acted like Salty Dogs... "pull up a chair"..."you want a soda?"..."here is how you do it"... "get your chart I'll show ya"... "follow us out"... "see those palm trees, get your bait off those in 60' of water,before the sun comes up"...etc. etc.
Lesson 1: Look closer at the tide chart you printed off the net, that way you wont have to wait 45 min. for the tide to float the boat enough to drag it off the sand. We still made bait.
Lesson 2: Learned that a small bubbler won't keep much bait alive. The spare bilge pump worked to feed lots of water to a cooler on the splashwell, but I couldn't put it low enough to pump at anything over 4 knots. When running faster than that, just pour water into the cooler.
We kicked tail on Yellowtail. 8-12 fish hooked per day. 2-8 fish to the boat. Biggest fish was a 30 lb'er. Around 10:00 we would go search for some Dorado, they were kind of scattered, but we got several hookups and a couple to the boat. The biggest Dorado was a 30 lb'er. I hooked a Marlin one day for a brief time, hook wasn't set good enough though.
We repeated this drill for a week. Get up before daylight, wade out to the boat anchored in the cove, run by GPS out to the mouth of the cove. Catch bait, go chase fish. Yellowtail very good, the Dorado, sailfish and marlin scattered. Throw in some Skipjack tuna, Cabrilla, Grouper etc and we had fun. Return to camp around 13:00 and clean up, gave some fish away to some of the locals, or vacuum sealed what we were going to keep. Then either go to town (Santa Rosalia or Mulege) or have a siesta. Go snorkling or back out to chase some fish in the late afternoon.
Learned quite a few things to make the next trip even more enjoyable. I'll buy more food in Mexico, I'll leave the camper at home, although it helped keep the semi trucks in their own lane on the hi-way. I'll fuel the boat up after I am almost to my destination (less weight on the trailer) because it is too easy to drop the right side tire off the pavement. 9' wide lanes, camper 8.5' wide, boat 8' wide. I'll go later next time to get into more Dorado and MR. BILL
Motored through a group of apprx 12 whales. Had a pod of apprx. 250 dolphins working off shore over 3 diff days. They liked to surf the bow wake at about 15 knots. The only tuna under them were Skipjack. The Dolphin were not bothered by the boat, but when I jumped in the water they turned and went the other way. It was strange watching them go by under me as far down as I could see in the 82 degree blue water. We also had a group of 100+ manta rays swimming off the Isla San Marcos on 2 diff. days.
As we left the campground my wife and I looked at each other and said "when, not if, we are going back". Looking back: we paid $16.00 for 4 days of freezer rental, 6pack of pacifico, 5 bags of ice, 4 sodas and 1 night of camping. We kept the fish cold for the trip back in a 150 qt. 5 day cooler layered with fish and ice and rock salt. In fact it froze the fish that wasn't already frozen, and we only had to add 2 more bags of ice.
Many thanks to those who contributed info for this trip (Diamondside among others. Sorry no pictures, my scanner doesn't work. I'll be going again next year or the year after, if you are interested let me know.
Re: Return from Baja
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