At night, the sunset over the Sierras was scenic.

Out to sea, the setting sun produced a trademark Baja pastel sunset. As is tradition on the Dean & Cathy's Baja Home Website, all the panoramas on the following pages are displayed as 680-pixel-wide images. This is the same width as the other pictures (they're 680 x 510). If you like the image and want to see it full-size, click on the image. JavaScript will open a new resizable window with scroll bars to display the full size (510 pixels high) panorama. When you're done looking, close the window as the original page remains in the background.

Bruce and Christine had to leave on Monday, which was too bad, because the winds died. We headed out to the islands. Cathy called on the radio and asked if anyone else was out there. I noted a boat out in the middle of "nowhere" bottom fishing. She asked if we saw Doug from Encantadas, as he was out and about that day. I said that I didn't recognize the boat. Doug came back and said it was him and he was indeed bottom fishing. Mmmmmm. We started trolling out by the seamount. Nothing. We trolled south to north La Poma and around the east side of the island. Nothing. We trolled past the south point several times. Nothing. We came back north across the inter-island reef and got a snag. Other than that, nothing. While Ed was unsnagging his bad self, I noticed that another group was fishing near where Doug was earlier that morning. I'd never fished that particular area before, but given our state of ineptitude, I trolled in that direction. I noticed bubbles coming up in about 100' deep water. Encantadas Kenny had told us about some bubbles before. Just before we got there, I marked a rockpile on the sonar at around 91'. A lot of "markers" (fish) were holding over the structure. I came about and put us on the spot. We dropped down to the depths. Before long, we were hauling up numerous Goldspotted Sand Bass with a few Spotted Bay Bass, and Cortez Grunts thrown in for good luck. I even hooked one delicious smallish Spotted Cabrilla.

I hooked a fish and started cranking it up from the depths. The little fish got real heavy all of a sudden. I thumbed my reel to increase the drag so as to get the mystery fish off the bottom, just in case it decided to head for its cave. I got it off the bottom and winched it up. Lo and behold, I apparently had originally hooked a spottie. Said hooked spottie was soon devoured by a pretty large (7 pound) Spotted Cabrilla. When I got them to the surface, the spottie was still hanging from the big cabrilla's mouth. This guy apparently bit off a bit more than he could chew!

Pandro and Cathy headed out early the next day. That left only Ed, Donna and I to harass the fish for the rest of the week. I got up early to see them off. The crescent moon hung over Punta Bufeo.

The sunrise that morning was nice. The temperature was ideal, in the low 70s.

Here it is again, a few minutes later.

We started fishing early that morning. The day turned out to be the calmest of the trip. Ed, Donna and I went back out to the rockpile. We picked up where we left off the day before and caught several decent Goldspotted Bass. A couple other boats were fishing further out, in the vicinity of the seamount. We noticed some birds feeding, so we ran over to check it out. When we got there, an enormous school of Sierra lie beneath us. The sonar screen was filled with fish., top to bottom. Bad news. We didn't have our steel leaders on. In fact, I didn't even have one made up, as I lost the one I was using the day before. So, I had to make one up. Fish were everywhere though, so taking time out didn't seem to be a big deal. Donna cast anyway and caught and landed a nice one, 5 - 6 pounds I'd say. Before Ed and I could get in the water, we were off the fish. We tried intermittently the rest of the day to fnd them, to no avail. We picked up a few here and there, but never found the big school.