An East Cape Christmas

This year we decided to escape the non-stop gloom of the Northwest and have part of the holidays in a sunny and warm Baja California.  Catherine and I flew out of Seattle, Marshall flew out of Phoenix, and Anne-Marie and Gary drove out of Orange County all to meet up at LAX and a flight to Cabo San Lucas.  After landing at the Cabo airport we got on a shuttle and had a one hour ride out to the East Cape area of Baja and the Rancho Leonero Resort.     

Rancho Leonero sits on a small point south of Los Barriles and was part of a 700 acre rancho with several miles of private white sand beach.  The point contains some of the last remnants of the reef that once existed in the Sea of Cortez.  The ranch used to be quite the celebrity site back in the 50's and early 60's then went vacant for a decade until a new owner bought it and started re-building and adding to the site.  Now the resort contains the old lodge, a set of bungalows, and a new two-story hotel section.  There is also the adjacent Rancho Leonero Estates that has some very nice homes along the beach.

On our first day I took off fishing in the morning to try and get some food fish since the lodge had none and Catherine and I wanted to eat.  My attempt wasn't too successful fishing the reef area, I lost a bunch of flies and caught only a small pargo and an even smaller porgy.  After breakfast, Anne-Marie and I geared up again to hit the water down from the reef.  I managed to catch a couple of Cornetfish, a Ladyfish, and my first Rooster Fish which was the one species I had been wanting to catch.

We borrowed la mesa de masaje and Catherine did massage at the edge of the pool area overlooking the point.  What a setting for massage, raptors were flying overhead, the surf was breaking at the shore and the sun was shining.

We spent a lot of the afternoon relaxing by the pool and just enjoying the good weather, each other's company, and Anne-Marie's iPod kicking out the tunes.   From the photos can you tell who lives in Southern California and who lives in Seattle?

On the second day we all decided to go out fishing in the super pangas that were at the lodge.  We took about an hour ride north to the shark buoys off of Punta Pescadero where Dorado were known to hang out.  Here we are ready to go for the day, walkie-talkies in hand so that we can communicate between the boats.  The pangas were a bit late showing up but finally did and we all headed out to the beach to get on board.

The ride out to Punta Pescadero was nice and we saw a jumping shark and some porpoises leaping out of the water on the ride out.  Once there the boat with Anne-Marie, Gary, and Marshall got right to it and started catching some dorado.  Gary got a small one then Marshall hooked into a big fish that went about 25-30 lbs. and tired him out landing it. 

They had landed three dorado before I finally got a take to the fly.  After some great leaping we had the dorado to the boat.  By-passing my usual catch and release practice so we could have fish tacos I had Guillermo gaff the fish and keep it for dinner.

I ended up getting one more dorado on the fly and lost the third one on his second jump.  The big excitement came as we found a marlin cruising and I cast to it a few times.  We were getting ready to move on and then the marlin came up and charged my fly.  I felt a good whack but was unable to set the relatively little 2/0 hook into the big billfish.  

Marshall got another big dorado and Anne-Marie got a few too so we had definitely taken care of the fish dinners for the rest of the week.

We went to watch them clean the catch which was fun because all the local cats came to eat at the fish carcasses.

Later that day Catherine and I did some snorkeling off the point which was pretty amazing.  Even with the somewhat windy conditions we still saw a lot of small jacks, snappers, trigger fish, pompano, porgy, puffers, and a host of aquarium-type fish.  We also took a walk down the beach to see the remains of a whale that had washed up on the shore.

Our third day was perfection - no wind and clear skies all day long.  I got up to fish the beach in the morning and landed five Rooster Fish, a few Cornetfish, and a Needlefish.  Catherine took a walk down to Punta Soledad and we walked back to the lodge for breakfast with the gang.  After breakfast I went snorkeling since the reef was very calm while Catherine set up to do some massage.   Marshall joined me for snorkeling for a while. 

For lunch we rode into Los Barriles to walk around the town and eat at Tio Pablos which had very good Mexican food and wasn't afraid to give us salsa and tortillas. 

On the ride back to Leonero we saw many of the local vacas alongside the road, including this bunch.  These cattle belonged to our taxi driver on his ranch just out of Rancho Leonero.

We spent the afternoon doing more snorkeling then sat by the pool waiting for dinner and saw a grey whale breaching just offshore.  It was like watching a fireworks show, we keep "oohing" and "awhing" as the whale flung itself out of the water.   

Our last full day arrived with another good day but a bit more wind than the previous day.  Anne-Marie and Gary decided to head out in a panga again but Catherine, Marshall, and I decided to stick around the lodge.  I got up early to fish the beach again and the Catherine and Marshall walked down to meet me so we could walk back together.  I had several Cornetfish, a Mexican Lookdown, and four Roosters landed by the time they met up with me.  We started walking back down the beach and when I found roosters feeding I cast to them then let Marshall land them.

The wind kept picking up that day getting very rough out there and we were a bit worried about Anne-Marie and Gary.  Catherine and I went looking at the houses in Rancho Leonero Estates just to see what was available there and then went back when we saw the panga land in the small cove south of the resort.  We met up with Anne-Marie and Gary just after they returned to make sure they weren't seasick.  To the contrary, they were excited as could be, Gary had landed a 75-80 lbs. Stripped Marlin for the first fish of the day.  They also caught five more dorado.  This gave us and most of the staff dinner for the evening as well as a cooler full of fish for Anne-Marie and Gary to take back home with them.

The next morning we woke to our last Huevos Rancheros for breakfast then began packing up to catch the taxi back to Cabo and the flights back home.  We spent our time at the Cabo airport planning our trip for the following year and eating chocolate.  Catherine and I began plotting a dual-home lifestyle.  At LAX we had to say our good-byes in customs since Marshall went to catch his connecting flight back to Phoenix and we had to continue on our flight back to Seattle. 

Fly Fishing Specifics

If you go to the East Cape area be prepared with rods in the 8 to 12-weight class, if you want to target the Marlin you may want to carry a 14-weight though the size of the ones we encountered looked like a 12-weight would be enough.   On all rods I use a fast sinking shooting head style line.  My 9-weight is loaded with a 300-grain, the 10-weight a 400-grain, and the 12-weight a 500-grain.  Leaders are pretty simple for Baja, I use a 3' section of 40 lbs. test with loops on each end.  I then loop in a 14-16" section of either 16 or 20 lbs. class tippet.  Finally I loop on a bite tippet of 20 lbs. for the surf or 30 lbs. offshore. 

Fly selection was pretty simple.  From the beach I threw a #1-2 Clousers Deep Minnow in chartreuse.  This was the fly for the Roosters and everything else.   There were very small sardinas on the beach that were about 3" long and the Clousers was a pretty good match to the bait.   For offshore I was using a #1/0 Sea-Habit Bucktail and a #2/0 Sar-Mul-Mac.  I got all my Dorado this trip on the Sar-Mul-Mac.  Obviously I needed something a bit bigger if I'd been seriously after a marlin.