Geoff got laid off from his electrician job in the Bay Area. He and I were talking in Yosemite and it seemed like a trip to Baja would be a good consolation for losing his job. In the meantime, Kerry was getting tired with the Bay Area weather, and being retired and all, another trip down south sounded better to him all the time. The three of us saddled up on Tuesday and headed down. Cathy was working, so it would just be us three.
We completed the usual drill in San Felipe in about 45 minutes. The road to Puertecitos was the same, starting out good and ending up crappy. We were in Puertecitos one hour and 15 minutes later. We proceeded down the Gonzaga road, stopping on the other side of Campo La Costilla to air down. About an hour and a half later, we pulled into camp at around 4:15 PM. We were greeted by neighbor Bruce Stuart and attack dog Cindy, all 5 pounds of her. We set up and heated up a pan of Cathy's famous chili.
The next day, we got the boat in the water in the afternoon. The tides were far from optimum. Coming up on the new moon, the tide was far out when we got up around sunrise. This pattern would persist for the next few days. We made the best of it and went tidepooling. The nights were quite cool, no, downright cold for Baja in May. I recorded 53° one night. This trip would prove to be the antithesis of the March trip. The fish were here. The yukky green water was gone and the water was clear. The winds, however, would be our nemesis the whole trip. Getting out to the islands was the challenge. The winds never really blew with a lot of authority; thank goodness for that, but they DID blow from just about every direction except from the due south. The nuisance winds would blow offshore during the night, then typically switch to either an east wind or north wind during the day. A couple days though, the blow from the west continued throughout the day. This was especially true on Saturday, when a Pacific storm blew through. Only one time did we experience the Devil's Wind. We took a siesta one afternoon when a nice cool onshore was blowing. The thermometer read 74°. During the course of my slumber I noticed that it sure seemed warm. A quick check of the thermometer showed the temperature was now 95°! As dusk settled in, it cooled off and again became quite pleasant.
On new moon day, we took a drive down to Punta Arenas at Gonzaga Bay for some clamming. We were successful enough and got a half-bucket in an hour and a half. The machine gun-toting teenagers at the checkpoint just north of Gonzaga took down our name and license number on the way back. We had clam hors d'oeuvres the next night, after allowing them to pass their sand over night. The night after that, I made clam linguine. Mmmmm baby.
After several days, the tides were such that we could launch early, albeit with difficulty, and just make it over the channel out of Roger's Bay. On one such day, it was actually quite calm that morning. I don't trust early morning calm. We headed out to the islands, but stayed fairly close to them. We started trolling near Punta Piedra Volcanica and trolled out to North La Poma. We kept going, around east La Poma and south La Poma toward Punta Cabeza de Pato. About half way there, I marked some fish so we jigged a lure or two or three, to no avail. I photographed a couple migrating Bonaparte's Gulls, one of which was sporting his new breeding plumage.
A nearby Eared Grebe was also decked-out in breeding plumage. It looks a lot spiffier than the gray little birds that hang out here in the winter.
We trolled around Punta Cabeza de Pato to my newly-found bass trench. A group of playful young sea lions were frolicking near us. They were curious, but hadn't learned how to harass us, which is nice. We kept our distance, so as not to give them any ideas. I blew most of the photo-ops. This one was the best shot that I could get out of a half dozen pictures. You can see the tidal rip to the north across La Barra.
Not much action was there this time, so we went over to the Butt Hole. I had a couple nice bites...maybe Halibut, but I couldn't land them. We went back on the troll, back up north across Kerry's Reef, the Pinnacles and back out to Punta Piedra Volcanica. At that point, it dawned on me that we'd been fishing for a few hours and it was still calm. I told the crew to wind `em up: we were going to give it a crack at the seamount. I fired her up and we were on our way.
Two boats were out there. We had noticed that the Tony Reyes fleet had been hanging out by the islands for the past few days. Both the Celia Angelina and the José Andrés were around. For those of you who don't know, these boats are motherships that take paying customers sport fishing out of San Felipe. When they get to the fishing grounds, they launch pangas and fan out. Here is the José Andrés off Punta Piedra Volcanica.
When we got to the seamount, the two boats were catching nothing. One boat was a panga off the José Andrés; the other was one of our neighbors from Las Encantadas. We joined them in catching nothing. I was marking fish, but none were biting. Geoff did manage to hoist up a large Goldspotted Bass off the bottom. It went into the yummy bag for lunch.
You might have noticed Kerry was hooked up here too.
He winched-in a trigger that was returned to the sea to bother someone else. They sure fight good though. After a half hour or so of nothingness except for bottom fish, I noticed bird action to the east that had persisted for quite some time. I told the boys to wind-in and hop back to the center seat for running. We ran the quarter mile or so out to the birds and bait. On the first cast, I was breezed by a group of Yellowtail...nice ones...10-pounders or so. A few casts later, I hooked and landed a nice Sierra, 5 - 6 pounds, I'd say. Into the bag it went. Our drift was 0.8 - 1.1 mph to the northwest. Before long, we were off the fish. In the meantime, the other boats saw us hootin' and hollerin', so they came over too. We ran back out to the fish and I promptly hooked another smaller Sierra and bagged it. I hooked and lost a couple more. The boys couldn't get hooked up. Personally, I don't think they cranked it fast enough. Just as the action was getting good, I noticed whitecaps coming from the east. I told the crew it looked like we had about three more casts. We did. I told them to wind-in, we were outta there. I fired her up and we ran the entire 7.5 miles into shore. The ride wasn't any big deal, but I was glad to be out of there.
I cleaned the fish up. Kerry barbecued one Sierra and Geoff made ceviche from the other.
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