Osprey
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3694
Registered: 5-23-2004
Location: Baja Ca. Sur
Member Is Offline
|
|
Fish, with gills
Fish, with Gills
Nobody remembers when it started. I guess that’s because fishermen in the Sea of Cortez are used to surprises. Besides, it wasn’t just one incident,
it was hundreds, but not all the same. I’ll tell you what I remember about it but it was a long time ago. It’s all just word of mouth – no pictures,
no scales on this one.
The things were down deep so the first pescadores to be effected were those who fish commercial, those who catch fish to sell to the fish buyers. They
fish on the few sea mounts in the bay, the tuna holes, spots where food fish school up. Probably the deepest spots were about setenta brazos, 70
fathoms or 450 feet when they were after whitefish and tilefish. Yellowtail and amberjack they caught usually at 100 to 200 feet along with snapper
and a few grouper.
Wherever the food fish are, they draw traffic – once a panga anchors and stays, anybody within sight will pull up in hopes of getting in on the
action. So when the things began to take fish, ruin gear, scare the hell out of everybody, a lot of people knew all about it at the same time. It was
big news around here I’ll say that. If it had been one or two guys reporting it, it would not have been so credible, but dozens of people would hit
the beach at the same time with the same kinds of stories.
The thing was self perpetuating because the reports were real time, corroborated and they were not all the same kinds of incidents. One morning at the
Pulmo tuna hole big tuna were being lost to the things in all the ways they can be taken; line cut, bare hook retrieved, carcass retrieved, rods
broken, reels fried, you name it. No sharks appeared, no whales, no Orcas, lobos, swordfish, dolphins, wahoo or submarines. Nobody saw what or who was
eating all their fish. The only thing the losers were sure about was that the things fed deep, they were big and hungry and fearless and they wanted
them gone.
Our local FONMAR guy, Juan Diego Macklis and a couple of guys from La Paz went out for a couple of days in likely spots and saw nothing but some
common dolphin on the move, two or three marlin jumping.
None of the trolling charter boats in the bay, who also fish the flats, lost anything, fish, line, nothing. After staying on the beach for four days,
drinking and scratching and cursing, the commercial guys went back out and got the same treatment on the near sea mount. Bonifacio tied off a mooring
line to a boat cleat, added his 300 feet of 500 pound test shark line and 12 feet of 800 pound test wire and baited it with a 10 pound barrilete. One
of the things filled his panga with water before the mono parted; it pulled the gunnel under the surface and pulled the boat almost 100 meters while
loading it up near to swamping. He wasn’t anchored or it might have been worse.
That same morning some of the boats dropped big squid jigs on the bottom and jigged em’ up thinking the things might be big Humboldt squid but nothing
touched them. The big cruisers filled the radio channels with sightings of whales but they were mostly baleen whales, humpbacks, one sperm whale, one
big blue.
Finally the news picked up on the story on a slow news day, it made the U.S. papers and then got small international notice. Two months later that
brought a group from Scripps and Mexico City to Palmas bay to ride around in boats, think lofty hypothesis. Then two months more brought a bathyscaph
from Mission Bay on a big boat with 50 people who vowed to get an answer about the new intruder from the deep.
After several meetings with the fishermen they made a plan to put the deep diver in place out by the near sea mount, have the fishing boats go back
out to draw in the hungry culprits. The big boat was on station with the bathyscaph at 200 feet when a dozen pangas showed up and anchored in the same
way, in the same place they had been fishing for generations.
The boats caught some nice pargo and huachinango, were unmolested while the sea divers watched from about 50 meters off the mount. After 4 hours they
gave up the experiment and went back to the beach to scratch and b-tch and drink and think heavy thoughts. I will give them this, they weren’t
quitters. They put out the word they would buy big barrilete and a half dozen big ones came their way. The big Scripps boat anchored on the tuna hole
for a night and a day and dropped the big baits down using high-tech small diameter line and wire attached to winches on deck. During the night the
trigger fish pulled off the reef and skinned those tuna types down to cat food. Lowtech usually beats high-tech in the Baja so nobody was surprised
much.
The big boat stayed in the gulf with the dive team for another month and discovered some things about the island school fish, about the resident whale
count and two new species of bottom sharks. By that time everything down south here pretty much went back to normal. Even though the great unknowns
were never seen, never came to the surface, windsurfing and kiteboarding fell way off for that season but regular sportfishing picked back up after
that sea monster glitch.
When the Scripps report came out it was a long list of sea creatures which they checked off as not being the things that haunted, for a while, this
little bay. They decided they were not mammals but true gilled fish with special skills and a clear dedication to feeding in the depths. Wherever they
went to feed, they became the prime predator in that layer. Nobody I know argues with any of that; if they come back here, every mother’s son will be
trolling with boat rods while hoping they won’t come up for air or food or us.
[Edited on 3-25-2012 by Osprey]
|
|
|
woody with a view
PITA Nomad
Posts: 15939
Registered: 11-8-2004
Location: Looking at the Coronado Islands
Member Is Offline
Mood: Everchangin'
|
|
aha! the one(s) that got away are what keep me returning every year!
|
|
|
watizname
Senior Nomad
Posts: 792
Registered: 8-7-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Good Story
I yam what I yam and that\'s all what I yam.
|
|
|
Pescador
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3587
Registered: 10-17-2002
Location: Baja California Sur
Member Is Offline
|
|
Shoot Osprey, I could have given several reports as I have hooked at least a half a dozen of those babies, but have yet to get one to the boat.
My dad was an early tourist in the San Carlos /Guaymas area and they would go out and hook a 15-20 lb yellowtail and then put a hook in them and send
them back out into the deep and for years they would hook really big fish but never managed to land one. Well, he was a bit of an inventer so he
bought a big spool of Parachute cord and then hooked up a starter motor and clutch system on the big spool with a chain drive. So he spent the
winter developing this 50/0 reel with a trailer spring for a rod mounted off of the transom with a pulley for a guide. So the next trip out to San
Pedro island they hooked a medium yellowtail and when they put the hooks in the yellowtail and sent him down on the big reel, they were waiting in
eager anticipation for a bite. They did not wait for long and sure enough a big grouper ate the yellowtail and they started pulling with the electric
motor on the reel and had the boat in gear as well. This was a big V-8 motor and it was straining and the electric starter motor on the reel was
starting to smoke a little, but they started to gain some line and motion so another 10 minutes and the big fish was starting to lift. Pretty quickly
they planed him to the surface and of course he had barometric trauma so he blew up and floated to the surface. I think it took everyone a long time
to lift him in thru the transom door and when they got the fish to the dock it turned out to be 368 pounds and I have a great picture with my dad
putting his head into the mouth of this big monster. When they got to the dock, he quickly dismantled the reel and it was quickly given away to
willing recipients at the dock. Dad would smile a little and say you only needed to ever catch one of those fish in your lifetime.
|
|
|
woody with a view
PITA Nomad
Posts: 15939
Registered: 11-8-2004
Location: Looking at the Coronado Islands
Member Is Offline
Mood: Everchangin'
|
|
sounds like a cool dad!
|
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xmbforum/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
