The Bounty of the Sea of Cortez

Even though I hadn't originally planned on visiting Baja during this trip, it made sense for me to come back to Mulege since Matthew and Nate would be here, as well as my two German, er, I mean Danish friends Roan and Jens. It was a nice relaxing week, with almost everyday spent in or on the water, and the evenings spent playing cribbage and dice with friends. I went on several scuba dives with the guys and Roan, Jens and I went on a sportfishing trip on Sunday. Another highlight of being back was visiting with my local friends at Pancho Villa's and El Patron, two of my favorite places in the world to relax and have a nice meal near the beach.

Our final scuba dive trip was a special visit to the Island of Santa Iñes Norte, where there is a sea lion rookery most of the year. We were hoping to get to dive and snorkel with the sea lions a little bit, and we weren't disappointed. I was surprised at how big the larger males were, and how gracefully they moved under the water, performing spins and flips with the greatest of ease.

We were considering booking a fishing trip for the following day, but Jens and Roan were a little hesitant because of a bad experience they'd just had with a fishing trip in Mazatlan. They got shut out on that trip... they had fish on the line, but couldn't land them. They were leary of spending another whole day without catching anything. I don't know anything about the fishing in Mazatlan, but the fishing here is near legendary for a small town, and the captain we were referred to came highly recommended, so I felt sure we would have a good day on the water.

We met our captain Jose Luis, known to everyone as "Niño", at 6 am on Sunday at the dock. Still bleary eyed, we loaded our gear into his boat and set off for Punta Prieta to catch some live bait. We spent about 15 minutes jigging in shallow water and caught about five or six small fish each, enough to satisfy Niño. I told Jens and Roan that at least they now could say they caught some fish in Mexico. So we headed off into deeper waters, and after 30 minutes or so we passed Punta Concepcion where there was a commercial fishing boat stringing out a long net into the waters near the mouth of the bay. After we passed the boat, we saw in quick succession a pair of whales (humpback or possibly cey whales) a few hundred meters from the boat, a large pod of dolphins swimming east, and a couple of manta rays swimming on the surface about 50 meters from the boat. We took this as a good sign of things to come. Not five minutes after we saw the mantas, we saw something else in the water, but much closer, maybe only 50 feet from the boat. It appeared to be a swordfish floating on top of the water. All that was visible was his dorsal fin and the "sword" of his nose. The captain excitedly steered the boat in his direction and strung up a live fish onto a reel and tossed the bait right in front of the marlin. I had actually assumed the fish was dead since I'd never seen a fish just sit on top of the water without moving like that. Unfortunately though, he didn't seem to be hungry as he didn't take the bait despite repeated attempts, and eventually swam off. After this, Niño strung up a rod and reel with a lure, for each of us and we trolled them off the back of the boat as we sought deeper waters. About 10 minutes later, there was a huge bite on Roan's reel. None of us were really sure what to do, but Roan picked up his rod and began to fight. Immediately a huge marlin burst from the water's surface and tossed his head as he fought to shake the lure. Despite Roan's valiant attempt to reel him in, the marlin had successfully shaken himself free of the hook. Although it was a big disappointment to lose the fish, it was also very encouraging since we hadn't been on the water that long. Not much longer, we spotted a sailfish on the surface exactly as the marlin was before. Again, we were unable to get it to bite, but it was still so cool to see the huge sailfin protruding from the water's glassy surface. We continued to motor out into deeper water and we approached a distance of about 10 miles from shore which is where the Dorado roam, a prized gamefish reknown for their beauty and delicious taste. Over the course of the next three or four hours, the three of us landed eight beautiful Dorado, many of which were extremely large and fierce fish. One of the ones that Roan caught was a monster that jumped repeatedly, followed by several dives to deep depth. All the fish were eventually brought on board and we were assured a great feast for that evening. On the long way back to shore (we had reached distances of close to 30 miles offshore in our pursuit of the Dorado), we spotted another group of breaching whales, another pod of dolphins, a sea turtle and the best of all were the acrobatic eagle rays that would explode from the surface and perform backflips and other aerial feats. Buoyed by a successful day, we enjoyed a beer on the long trip back and marveled at the beauty of the Dorado. I was truly amazed at how beautiful the fish are. When they are swimming in the water, they appear to change color from brilliant gold, to emerald green, then to blue and back again. When we reached shore, we gave two of the fish to Niño, four to Pancho Villa's restaurant and two to El Patron's restaurant. The fish we gifted to Yolanda at Pancho's bought us a big discount on a huge Dorado dinner that night. It was one of the best tasting fish I've ever had, probably made more delicious knowing we'd caught it that day. I should mention that, as proud as we were, we had no delusions that we'd caught the fish due to any skill of our own. All our success is completely due to the knowledge and skill of our captain who knew just where to stalk the Dorado in the vast offshore stretches of the Sea of Cortez. This point was underscored when we docked and another boat that had been out Dorado fishing had come up completely empty handed. Yep, all credit to Niño. What an epic fishing trip! And not only because of the fish that we caught. It was so cool to see whales, dolphins, manta rays, eagle rays, marlin, sailfish, and a turtle all in the same day.

As I write this, Roan and Jens just walked out the door to catch the bus to Loreto and continue their trip. I'm really glad they decided to come to Mulege on my recommendation as that was one of the reasons I came here as well. I'm bummed to see them go, because some of the best moments of my trip so far has been shared with them. I wish them well in the rest of their trip and hope to see them again soon. That's both the blessing and the curse of traveling: you meet great people who become really good friends, but it's only fleeting as you eventually have to say goodbye. Well, Roan and Jens... good luck and Rød grød med fl­øde!