South of the Border, Down Mexico Way

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

When your boss says he's planning a deep sea fishing trip to Mexico and he'd like for you to come - you go. So I went. A group of us headed down to the southern tip of Baja California for three incredible days of deep sea fishing. We fished out of the sleepy little fishing village of Buena Vista, about an hours drive northeast of Cabo San Lucas. We stayed at Rancho Buena Vista - a small resort built in the '50s (probably hasn't changed much since) which was an isolated getaway for Hollywood celebs. Being that it was in between vacationing seasons, we were the only guests at the resort - we had the place all to ourselves. On to the pictures...

Here is the view from the front porch of our casita. When a resort has more hammocks than phones and TVs, its a good sign.

Every morning all the fishing boats would head out to the "squid spot" to catch a few squid, which would be used for bait. Here are pictures of the sunrise over the Sea of Cortez, our Captain (Gilberto) gaffing a squid, and Gordon Mohr (el Hefe) reeling in a squid.

Here are the spoils of the first day of fishing - two 65lb yellowfin tuna and two mahi mahi. What happened to the tuna on the right you ask? After hooking the tuna I fought it for over 30 minutes. Just as it became visible from the boat a sea lion (yes, a sea lion, probably about 400lbs easy) attacked the tuna and started tearing it apart. The Captain and 1st Mate (Jose) threw gaffs at the sea lion to chase it away - but it kept attacking the tuna all the way to the back dock of the boat. After taking a good chunk of the tuna it finally swam away.

Here is a picture of Michael Wright bringing in a tuna on day two. About 30 seconds after taking this picture Michael collapsed of exhaustion after boating the fish. I think this was the last time he touched a pole on the trip.

The second day ended up being a great day for fishing. Our boat caught two more tuna and about 12 mahi mahi. Here is a picture of the tuna I caught that didn't get attacked by the sea lion. Gordon had been fishing for about 30 minutes with no bite. He asked if I wanted to give it a shot so I grabbed the pole. About 15 seconds later I hooked the tuna. Beginners luck.

On the last day we didn't have any luck catching tuna so we decided to troll for mahi mahi. After trolling for about an hour we caught 8 mahi mahi in the span of 5 mintues - the boat was chaotic. Just when Jose was telling us there weren't any more fish (no mas) in the area Jim (Gordon's son-in-law) spotted something dark just off the back of the boat. Gilberto put a minnow on a hook and cast it in - almost immediately hooking a sail fish. Being that I was the rookie on the boat the crew let me do most of the work reeling. The sailfish was about 7 feet long and 110lbs and fought like crazy. (better pic coming). Catching the sailfish ended up being a great way to top off the trip.