The winter in San Diego has been cold, at least for a winter in San Diego. Kenai Bob told us the fishing was good in February. We decided that it would be nice to see what Baja was like in February. The quarter moon fell around President's Day, so that's when we scheduled it. Bruce and Christine headed down the week before and spent the whole week there. Pandro, Marwan, Mike and I left on Thursday.
We arrived in San Felipe in a little over 4 hours. The Army checkpoint south of the Laguna Salada was deserted. Presidente Fox has stated that the Army has become corrupt (imagine that) and he is again tasking the Federal Judicial Police, aka the Federales, with drug interdiction. The fox guarding the hen house, pun intended. El Presidente will have his work cut out for him in ridding the Mexican government of graft. Good luck.
We ran the Agua Azul hielo, Horse Market, Calafia, sub-agencia, gas-er-up drill in San Felipe and headed south. The road to Puertecitos is still the same, no better, no worse, which adds up to not so bad all-in-all. After climbing the hill south of Puertecitos, we cruised toward Punta Bufeo, averaging around 30+ miles per hour. We made it to camp in about 1 hour 15 minutes, pretty darn good in my estimation. Everyone else was already there. Mike fired up his chili and we proceeded to polish it off. Bruce had provided grub to Pandro and Marwan earlier, but they helped us with the chili too. It was too good to resist. A beer and a couple snorts later, we called it quits for the night. It was cold and clear. Overnight, some high clouds blew in and made for a spectacular Baja sunrise on Friday morning. These are Javascript pop-ups. Click on the picture and a full-size image will open in a new window that's resizable and scrollable. Close the window to return to this page.
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Here it is again, up a little closer.
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The tides were really wimpy, the last quarter having just passed the day before. We had to manually run the boats over the hump to launch in Roger's Bay. After the boats were in the water, we fished the reef off camp and caught plenty of bass and triggers. Many of the bass were nice-sized.
Although it was relatively calm, swells from the previous days' blow persisted. Pandro laid out a few bass and a porgy for the camera.
Then, he wielded the Whopper Bopper and commenced filleting.
A trio of American Oystercatchers frolicked on the rocks, trying to catch a few oysters, I reckon.
I got pretty close before they flew the coop.
That night, Pandro made his now-famous barbecued chicken with garlic marinade.
The marinated zukes and some spuds rounded it out.
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