Osprey - 5-11-2008 at 02:16 PM
Boya Pescar
Thomas Wolfe was right about some things. If you leave town, go back to visit 40 years later, you won’t find your favorite 10c beer around anymore.
Like a broken clock that’s right twice a day I think almost everybody on the Netting Cabrilla thread was/is right about the Sea of Cortez and the
fishery. It’s all a matter of perception.
When I first got to this little village I found out about an old time fishing method that changed the way I look at fishing around here. Some day I’ll
go talk to a few of the old guys and see if I can scrounge one up just for a photo and a look see.
It’s been out of style for so long nobody could remember the name of the thing. I’m gonna guess it was called Boya Pescar because it was like a buoy.
The way it was described to me:
You take 3 or 4 meter lengths of rebar, tie an empty milk carton to one end with some pretty strong fishing line.
Then you take similar line in lengths of about 2 meters, tie 3 of them to the rebar, (about 2 feet apart) affix bait hooks to the other end.
Put about 10 of them in your panga, get up early, hug the shore in the boat, throw the net for sardines, lisa, whatever, put the bait in the boat
(having filled one compartment with sea water), motor, paddle or sail to a likely spot, bait all the hooks, throw the gadgets over in a line or
circle.
Then you just wait a while, pick em back up with your catch, try another spot.
The sardines will struggle, swim in circles, tangle up and die but the commotion should not go completely unnoticed and for fish feeding in the top 3
or 4 meters of the ocean it should be an excellent, if limited attraction.
The exercise is fraught with difficulties;
When you come back, two are long gone – probably sharks took em way out to sea.
Two more are hopelessly tangled together with a big turtle in the middle.
Three or more big barillette are dragging one around in circles evading your grasp.
One has become a tangled mess wrapped around another boat’s prop.
One is being towed about by a 7 foot blue shark and you know it will be dangerous to try to kill it and boat it.
Of course, this is all conjecture; I don’t think they were banned so much as replaced by handlines, anchored shark buoys and nets of all kinds and
sizes. I can’t imagine regulations were more strictly enforced 50 years ago.
Things do change. When I first fished down here, almost 40 years ago, all I ever had as a lure was a rapala. Now I have a couple hundred lures and
only two are rapalas. Boy the fish sure must have changed a lot while I was working my way back down here.
I wonder what the Pesca people would say if they caught me out there with a boat full of bait, rebar and milk cartons. Hmmmmm.
Don Alley - 5-11-2008 at 09:17 PM
bump
I believe I've seen this method used recently near Isla Ildefonso, between Loreto and Concepcion Bay. But without the long (3-4 meters?) rebar. The
target was apparently yellowtail, not the sea lion that was dragging one of the small buoys all over the place.
Paulina - 5-11-2008 at 09:49 PM
The Pesca people would call you the old man of the sea.
P<*)))><
Pescador - 5-12-2008 at 07:48 AM
Remember Jug fishing for Catfish where you went out at night with milkjugs, a length of strong line, and smelly bait? You baited the hooks, set the
jugs afloat, and came back the next morning and hauled in all your catfish. Well, we have an enterprising fisherman in the Santa Rosalia area that
does that sometimes in the morning with yellowtail. He baits up a number of jugs with live bait, puts these rigs out, and comes back in an hour or
two to try to find most of his milkjugs. By that time the yellowtail are pretty tired from hauling around this jug and don't put up much of a fight.
The biggest challenge comes from not having other pangueros take your jugs and fish.
dean miller - 5-12-2008 at 12:13 PM
Good ole Tom --"You can't go home again" & "Look homeward Angel..."
I recall his books and the fishing method you describe...but the passage of soo many years and my absolute and positive lack interest in pole fishing,
I had forgotten about it.
Thanks for the reminder.
sdm
Cypress - 5-12-2008 at 12:19 PM
It's what you'd call a "poor man's longline", a few hooks on a vertical set rather than hundreds of hook on a horizontal set.
Osprey - 5-12-2008 at 12:33 PM
The things may have gone out of use because it may have become a "be careful what you wish for" thing. I'm sure there were real PILE UPS with
uncountable fish drawn to the feeding spots at times. Can you imagine paddeling back to the drop zone to become engulfed in the frenzy, to become
almost part of it, trapped in the melee by fish whose ferocity and numbers were overwhelming, perhaps having to make your way to the rim to gaff and
club those almost lifting your boat out of the water. Perhaps turtles were the target and the device caught them well enough but bigger turtles drug
them far from the drop zone. I'll do some research.