Another Baja Report from May

I neglected to report my kayak fishing trip to Baja last month with some buddies of mine from work.  After seeing scwafish's report, I felt I should do something about that.

Anyway, we packed our kayaks and gear into the Toyota Tundra and at midnight May 11th, Adam, Levi (a.k.a "Steele_Leader" on this forum), and I set off towards Mexico.



After a long drive, a night in Ensenada, and another long drive we made it to our first fishing stop, Bahia de Los Angeles.  We fished that evening and all the next day.  We caught probably 5 different types of fish with 99% of them being spotted sand bass.  I never thought I would come to think of bay bass as a pest, but they were so easy to catch and seemed to prevent us from catching anything else.



The next day we drove down to Loreto for our next fishing adventure.  We had a little trouble finding the beach we were planning on fishing form and managed to get the truck stuck in the sand that morning and missed the morning bite.  That afternoon however we paddled out to Isla Danzante and got into some amazing ladyfish ("machete" to the locals).



I'm always interested in catching bizarre fish and thought I'd try jigging in about 100' of water.  Well that didn't last two long becuase I manged to get snagged right away.  Oddly enough my snag came loose but I still had something on my line that seemed to weigh a lot but didn't fight at all.  Turns out  I snagged a couple large rock scallops.




Another day of driving and we made it to Las Barrilas on the East Cape.  It was exciting to see all of the large power boats and we launched that night right in front of a huge fleet of them moored along the beach.  Just outside the moored fish we trolled some broken-back rebels and managed to get into some bonito and skipjacks.  We hadn't gotten into any hard fighting pelagic fish prior to this and I was still fishing with my bass rod when I got my first skipjack which certainly made things more interesting.



We spent at day off La Ribera south of Las Barrilas, and while the scenery was nice we never managed to find the reef with all the fish.  I did however  end up with a nice little rosy snapper and a filefish for some excellent ceviche that night.



The next couple days we fished a bit north off Punta Pescadero hoping to catch a pargo or two.  We did however get into some nice jack crevalle ("Toro").  In fact Adam seemed to have them dialed in and managed to catch about 5 that first night.  I have no idea how he was able to paddle back after that.




Levi did manage a nice snapper our last night there.



Our final fishing stop was the northern end of Magdelana Bay on the Pacific side.  Although the water was a bit colder and the marine layer hung aroudn all day, this was by far the best fishing of the whole trip.  We had non-stop action on spotted sand bass, halibut, shortfin corvina, bonefish, leather jackets, and an occasional broom tail grouper.   We must have caught and released several hundred fish the two days we were there.  In fact the fishing was so good, we'd pull over to fish from the shore half the time.




We spent about 2 1/2 weeks of vacation on this trip and caught a total of 35 different species of fish, most of them new to all of us.  We never got into the dorado or yellowtail like we would have like, but it was an amazing trip.  I think the total cost of the trip ended up being $1500 for the three of us or about $500 each.  Not bad considering that included all of the permits, licenses, gas, food, beer, etc..

I've uploaded more pictures in my NCKA photo gallery if anyone wants to see more. http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?set_albumName=bsteves-pics&option=com_gallery&Itemid=63&include=view_album.php


Brian

Brian,
Sounds/looks like an truly awesome trip.
Some very interesting looking fish.  
Also, cool that you got both a right eyed and left eyed butt.


Stuart

Brian,
 
Also, cool that you got both a right eyed and left eyed butt.


Stuart

Ya mean it wasn't done with mirrors?  

Seriously, a great report of what was clearly a great trip!  My question is:  How the devil are you able to identify all those fish species?  I have enough trouble telling a grass from a gopher rockfish!

Randy

Randy,

It just so happens that the three of us on the trip all work at the Bodega Marine Lab.  As you can imagine, being marine biologists we revel in our ability to identify what we catch.  We also cheat and bring things like fish identification books.

Brian

Great report and photos.  Thanks for posting it.  That looks like one awesome road trip.

Now, you've got me dreaming of doing something similar.

A baja roader is something I've always wanted to do.  Nice pics and great assortment of species.

I've driven all the way to Cabo and it was a great experience.  Your first on the pacific side and then you cross over to la paz.  The crystal blue water is unbelievable.  There's plenty of places to stop and camp out and you can't beat the weather.