No Country Club For Old Men

I had a chance to do some fishing in Baja with a few friends. As it turned out a couple of people had to bail at the last minute and it was just Joe and me.

Molly helping to get gear ready.



Joe pulled into my street at 0330 on Sat. morning and we hit the road. Joe isn’t one to stop unless absolutely necessary when making this trip. He packed sandwiches and cokes and let it be known we were on a mission to get 600 miles South ASAP!



We hit the San Ysidro border crossing just before dawn and did the tourist card shuffle thang. We had an uneventful trip through TJ and Ensenada. South of Maneadero we hit the construction zone. The road was dirt, but hard graded and fairly smooth. We stopped for gas in San Quintin and pushed South. We didn’t stop again until El Rosario, where we filled up. No chance to visit or take pics. The new El Rosario bridge is well under way and looks to be over halfway completed. We waved at Andy in Catavina and hit our destination about 4:00 pm.



I wasn’t sure exactly where we were as nobody seems to be able to spell it correctly!?!?









We dropped the boat at the beach and went into town to get the trailer. We were set up by dark, had a quick dinner and set the alarm clock for 0500.







The….errrrr…facilities….poco rustico.






Sunday morning and we were on the water by 0630. Immediately we started catching 7-9 lb. bonito trolling 6X’s, scrambled egg. It was game on and we quickly got our fill of big bonito and small cudas. We hit the reef straight out from the camp with good structure in about 60’. My second cast was a 7# Calico. Excellent Calico fishing for the next hour or so and Joe decided he wanted to troll some more for YT. Not many birds working. Not a lot of fin bait in the water. We marked squid everywhere and a few bass puked up market sized squid. The yellows just were not around. We went outside the reef into about 90’ of water and continued catching many calicos and sand bass. The quality of these fish was unreal. I think we caught 1 small cali all day with most fish in the 3-6# range and the occasional bigger unit.









We fished a small island just North of the bay. Bouncing plastics off the boilers and shore.







Joe was dialed in on the YT and was just relentless in throwing and trolling the iron for these fish. He was rewarded with the only Jurel of the trip. And we fished hard for 5 days!



Evenings were peaceful and relaxing on the beach. A very cold wind blew every afternoon. The Kindle and a cold beer.





Tuesday morning we were completely fogged in and opted to wait it out surf fishing the beach. It was a fish per cast for these hungry jack smelt



Surf fishing is unreal down there and Joe persisted in the afternoons for the biggest spotfins I have ever seen! The big one was 26”.



When the fog lifted we hit the boilers a few miles South for some epic calico fishing. Joe managed a nice Goat too. This was later given to Rafael and his wife, Maru made some killer ceviche for the family and us.









Fishing inside the boilers….

rdrrmBe, Thanks for the report! Nice Fish!