Fishing Around Bahia San Quintin
http://highwayswest.com/archives/2005/02/fishing_around.htm
February 02, 2005
"We're going fishing down in Baja. You should go."
That was the message, the sort of message only a lunatic would ignore. I collected my toothbrush and an extra shirt and my sleeping bag. At the
ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m., the fishing crew arrived.
Dr. Lee had come down from the San Francisco area, and idling outside my house was his old Chevy Suburban. That thing is still unrivaled; it's
ultimate road-camping machine. It had been up and down the North American continent many times, and was so filled with tropical vermin after a long
spell in Belize that cat-sized spiders hopped out during the usual customs search at the U.S. border. If I remember correctly, one of these spiders
had never been seen by the customs officials. They attempted to capture it, perhaps to put it in the Smithsonian, but it got squished or shot with a
fire extinguisher or something like that, and so much for science.
Anyway, Dr. Lee lives like a monk on Southeast Farallon Island, some 23 miles west of the Golden Gate. Housed in an old Coast Guard shack, he does
something or other involving the Elephant Seals. (I believe he is the world's foremost expert in this field.) And while this is a story about fishing
in Baja California, I might as well take a few moments to describe one of the most insane conflicts of the Gold Rush: the Farallon Islands' Egg Wars.
When the gold and silver mines of the Sierra, Comstock and beyond were at their most feverish stages, money was everywhere and supplies were not. San
Francisco was just a cowtown regularly burned down due to idiocy and drunkenness, and certain luxury commodities ? whisky, oysters, eggs, etc. ? were
in such demand that miners both rich & hoping to be rich were happy to spend $1.50 on a single egg. That's about $33 in today's money.
(The ultimate Gold Rush luxury meal was the "Hangtown Fry," consisting of fresh eggs and live oysters fried up with bacon. It's damned good and you
can order it up today in the town where it was born: Placerville, California. Still, you're probably better off ordering a Hangtown Fry from a good
San Francisco breakfast restaurant.)
But there weren't enough chickens in San Francisco, which led a few ambitious characters to row over the treacherous waters to the Farallones, where
they would collect eggs from the thousands of seabirds roosting on the rocky little islands. Between the 1850s and 1890s, numerous battles were waged
in the Egg Wars: Poachers fought the builders of the lighthouse, the Coast Guard fought the poachers, and rival egg-gatherers fought each other. Some
of those egg boats carried a bounty of a thousand eggs ? worth about $33,000 in today's terms.
But let's get back to the fishing ....
Cousin Lerbert and C.H. made up the balance of our fishing group; they are fine traveling companions but you're equally fine not knowing any details
about them. Lerbert and Dr. Lee had made the journey to San Quintin a year earlier, and had made all the arrangements for this trip. (Those who are
serious about their fishing consider the waters around San Quintin among the best spots on the Pacific, although amateurs are just as welcome. While
it feels like another world, it's only about a four-hour drive south of the border.)
We settled inside the Suburban and passed the time with the usual pursuits of jabbering and smoking cigarettes, while C.H. and I made sandwiches from
supplies in the ice chest. Hungry from this work, we made our lunch stop around 3 p.m. in Rosarito Beach. Tacos y Tacos, the world's best fish-taco
stand, can be found there in a strip mall on the north side of town. (Just look for the car wash and signs pointing to the supermarket.) We went
through a dozen-plus shrimp and fish tacos, bought a sack of fresh flour tortillas from the tortilleria across the parking lot, and made our way back
to Highway 1.
The toll road lasts until the seaport of Ensenada, and then you're on a two-lane that's fine until nightfall, when cattle feel the need to sleep on
the blacktop. It was early August and daylight still lasted forever, but it was still dark when we rolled into San Quintin, a farming town with the
usual shops and rustic restaurants along the highway. Dr. Lee and Lerbert spent about thirty dollars on a bottle of extra-fancy tequila and we got on
the dirt road leading to the Old Mill.
It's about four miles from the pavement to the small bayside settlement, though it feels longer and wronger in the pitch-black night. Dr. Lee drove to
the headquarters of Tiburon, the fishing outfitter, and we were sad to find nobody home. The "pangas" were sitting on their trailers in the front
yard, and a dog was going crazy nearby. Otherwise, we were alone. Dr. Lee knocked on the door for a good 20 minutes while C.H. and I wandered down the
dirt road looking for a polite place to empty our bladders.
It eventually became clear that the "arrangements" consisted of Dr. Lee remembering the name and general location of the outfitter. We had no choice
but to visit the Old Mill.
This place is something else. On the northeastern edge of Bahia San Quintin, the Old Mill is nothing less than an Old English Wheat Mill, built by
actual Englishmen more than a century ago. It's a tragic story: These English farmers and dreamers tried to establish wheat farms in the fields of San
Quintin. They built a pier, a mill, houses, even a few miles of railroad aimed at the United States. But drought and horror were all they reaped. By
the time the colony lost a 17-ton locomotive at the little pier ? it tumbled from the ship into the bay and remains there to this day ? little hope
remained. The colony was abandoned around 1900 (or 1910, depending on the source).
Under that gristmill is a friendly, busy cantina and restaurant. (Comfortable rooms can be had, too, and there's an RV park outside.) We settled down
at a table and had a round of drinks. Lerbert went asking around for Tiburon, and by and by (several rounds later) Tiburon showed up. I think. In any
case, arrangements were made and my fishing party made its way back to the boatyard, where we would bed down on the ground and await our early call.
Being stupid, I imagined our outdoor sleeping would take place somewhere along the 3,000 miles of available Pacific beachfront, where crashing waves
and cool breezes would lull me to slumber. Hah. We were in a boatyard next to the stagnant edge of a shallow bay. A halogen security light burned my
eyes and mosquitoes feasted on my scalp. Luckily, dogs were barking the whole time. After three or four hours of miserable half-sleep, I developed
enough common sense to climb inside the Suburban and use the backseat as a bed. It was great.
* * *
Lerbert woke me about an hour later. We all stretched and brushed our own teeth and accused each other of not bringing coffee. And then we heard the
kind of vomiting you usually only hear in an Eastern European nation. From behind a panga, our skipper emerged, smiling and wiping frothy bile from
his mustache. We were in good hands. Dr. Lee and C.H. loaded the crucial supplies from the Suburban to the boat while Lerbert and I wandered over to
the Old Mill to see about coffee. By the time we secured four tall styrofoam cups of the stuff, Dr. Lee was yelling, saying get on this damned boat or
this or that will happen, etc. I can't recall what time it was, but in my memory the sun was just then rising over the low hills.
The beaten-yet-handsome little boat pulled up to the short pier and I climbed aboard. At this northern tip of the bay, the water is still and shallow
and dirty. But just a quarter-mile away, the Bahia is clear & choppy, and the landscape is a Dr. Seuss panorama of endless water, wetlands fat with
migratory birds, comically blue skies and a series of stout black volcanic cones dotting the otherwise flat shoreline ... oh, and dolphins popping out
of the water almost everywhere you looked. The bay itself is huge; we bounced along for six or seven miles before the mouth was visible. At low tide,
that sandy ridge sticks up and blocks the surf. But at this hour, we only had to maneuver over five-foot surf to get to the Pacific. By that time, the
violent bouncing had reminded everybody of the night's indulgence, and C.H. began passing around the beers and tortillas while Lerbert and Dr. Lee
vomited off the stern. Our skipper took his first beer and tortilla, saying about the only thing he'd say all day: "Okay, Se ?or."
The panga turned north after slamming through the bay's mouth. As I didn't have a camera at the time, I'll just have to describe the scene: The
volcanic cones were too our right, with a wide empty beach beneath them. We went out perhaps a mile offshore. Our skipper let off the throttle and a
perfect silence descended upon the boat. We each took a beat-up rod & reel and baited the hooks. (Even though I can see that primeval scene as clear
as if it was in front of me today, I can't remember if we secured live bait.)
Just as I was about to cast my line, a majestic pilot whale breached on the starboard side, not 10 feet away from us. It was the length of the boat or
a little more, brilliant blue-black in color. As a great fountain sprayed out of its blowhole and gulls dove for whatever he was eating, the whale
made a crazy laughing noise and sunk its fat head into the sea again, with the cartoon tail doing a wiggle before it slapped hard against the water
and vanished.
Huge formations of pelicans crossed by, while the usual sea-bum birds harassed us for snacks. My great victory of the day was reeling in a
decent-sized Yellowtail, pretty big for that time of year. I'm sure my companions captured fish of equal or better stature, but I didn't much notice
after I got my Yellowtail. In any case, the good fishing was short-lived. Soon, we weren't doing much more than pointlessly tangling up the lines, due
to a combination of shoddy old reels and our own proud incompetence.
"Bottom fish," grumbled our skipper, after untangling my reel for about the eleventh time. He took us around Isla San Martin, a volcanic cone sticking
up nakedly from the sea. It was pretty as you'd like, but we got nothing. Finally, he settled on a patch of sea where the rockfish always bit. And we
brought in a good supply of the so-called "Pacific Red Snapper." (It always makes me a little blue to see their eyes and throats and tongues and lungs
pop out as they're dragged up to the surface, but such is death. Sadly, these creatures are slow to mature and have been seriously overfished along
the Pacific. It is hoped that quotas will return the rockfish to a healthier population level.)
By noon or so, even the scenery and fresh salt air couldn't put off our fatigue. The skipper was tired, too. He'd put down about a beer every 15
minutes since we left the Bahia. We turned back, tired yet mildly triumphant, and landed at the Old Mill's pier. (The whole fishing expedition cost
$150, I believe. As usual, I was broke and Cousin Lerbert kindly fronted my fee.) Dr. Lee set off to arrange the cleaning and packing, as he is an
expert in such marine sciences, and I went right to the bar to nurse my sunburn. The Old Mill's restaurant is said to be very good, but that wasn't
the case when we had lunch. Not terrible, just plain and slapdash, and the enchilada sauce had a distinct canned flavor.
Didn't matter. By mid-afternoon we were rolling up Highway 1 again, with a giant cooler packed with fresh filets. We would camp at Punta Banda just
south of Ensenada, at a place discovered by our friend Dino, who wasn't with us due to working at the San Francisco Chronicle or some such nonsense.
This place, a privately-owned campground, is on Route 23 on the way to La Bufadora. It's before the La Jolla campground to your right. Beyond that,
all I can suggest is to get there in the daylight. The dirt road to the campground goes left (south) and then straight up and over the spine of Punta
Banda. On the other side, you'll see about 25 vague campsites and maybe a guy collecting five or ten dollars for the night. It's worth it. (He may
show up in the morning. It's still worth it.) You find a level place and settle down for the night. Cliffs beneath you drop about a hundred feet to
the Pacific crashing on the rocks below. There is an outhouse ... well, on this trip there was a standing outhouse and the remains of an exploded
outhouse.
We got a fire going and passed the beers around. In all the excitement, we'd neglected to visit a grocery. The supplies were limited: tortillas, some
deli cheese from the Albertson's in Los Angeles, beer, a fancy bottle of tequila, some salsa from the Tacos y Tacos stand, a few limes and a fancy
futuristic little camp-stove belonging to C.H.
Lerbert and Dr. Lee did whatever they do. C.H. and I got to work on the inventions. First, "Nature's Quesadilla." Fresh tortillas grilled over the
little camp-stove with whatever cheese was left. Everybody loved Nature's Quesadilla, as it brought together all the major food groups in a way that
complimented the sea air and starry skies. Next, "Nature's Margarita," made from the little bit of ice we still had, along with the fancy tequila and
the juice of a whole lime. Best c-cktail on Earth.
We slept around the campfire and woke to the waves crashing against the cliffs, just as it should be. A perfect three-day journey, and when we got
back to C.H.'s place in East L.A., his neighbor actually turned some of that fresh fish into sushi. Incredible.
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