After our very fun Baja trip for Christmas of last year we decided to again meet up in East Cape this fall for the prime fishing season. Instead of staying at a resort this time we chose to rent a condo so that we could do our own cooking. We picked the small Mar y Sol condo complex in Los Barriles because it had several units open, a pool, good snorkeling right in front, and proximity to the pueblo of Los Barriles and the Hotel Buenva Vista Resort which had good boats. We rented from Julie at A Baja Vacation which has a lot of properties for rent in the Los Barriles/Buena Vista area.
Mar y Sol sits just south of Los Barriles and just north of Buena Vista. We had a beach front 2 bedroom condo unit which was perfect and Annemarie & Gary had a 1 bedroom unit just above us.
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Mar y Sol condo at sunrise. Our unit is the first one up from the beach. |
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The Living room area |
Catherine making nachos in the kitchen |
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The main bedroom |
The view to the south |
We spent a lot of time just relaxing around the condo this trip. Either sitting at the pool, walking the beaches, watching the sunrise, and swimming and snorkeling in the Sea of Cortez. The snorkeling in front of the complex was amazing, the best I've seen yet. There were thousands of typical reef fish and tropical fish plus big schools of game fish. Catherine saw a dorado on the first day and a sea turtle on the last day. I got into a school of probably 400-500 ladyfish one day that was stunning to see along with a school of nice jacks one day. We snorkeled pretty much every day if the water was at all clear.
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Marshall taking a siesta |
Marshall reading by the pool |
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Gary hanging by the pool |
Catherine doing her morning yoga |
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Heading out to snorkel |
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| The Los Barriles panga fleet on the beach | Launching |
We also went into Los Barriles almost daily to get fresh tortillas at the small tortillaria there, to get more water at the grocery, and to check e-mail some. You could walk into town early in the morning, later in the day it would be too hot so we'd drive. We also took our first day to go grocery shopping for real at Costco in Cabo San Lucas and the Mega in San Jose del Cabo. My advice - go to the Mega only and load up for the week, it is a great store and right off the toll road ($2.60 US) from the airport so it saves a lot of time driving down 'The Corridor' between San Jose and Cabo San Lucas but at least we took the time to see it once.
We had one very windy day and the water was totally churned up so we decided to take advantage and drive to Todos Santos on the Pacific side of Baja. The road took us through the small towns of San Bartolo,where they made great dulces; San Antonio, and El Triunfo, an old mining town. Driving along Catherine was reading the section in our book on driving in Baja and we pretty much ran into all the dangers - cows in the road, burros in the road, dogs in the road, trucks in our lane, the road turning into desert without warning, etc... It was an interesting drive up and over the Sierras and down to the Pacific Coast to Todos Santos, an artsy town with nice restraunts and lots of galleries. We ate lunch at Los Adobes which had great ceviche and salad. They also had a nice internet cafe so that I could check my e-mail and get my first good latte in Baja.
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| Cool building on a side-street | Nuestra Senora de Virgin de Pilar |
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The main drag of town |
The gardens at Los Adobes |
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| The Dia de los Muertos alter at Los Adobes | At lunch |
I did most of my fishing off of the beach either in front of the compound or to the south. Along these waters I'd fish each morning for about 1.5 - 2 hours and did pretty well. My beach catch included: Pez Gallo (Rooster Fish), Jack Crevalle, Ladyfish, Mexican Lookdown, Paloma Pompano, Coronetfish, Pargo, Snappers, and Rock Bass of several types.
On Tuesday I went out on a panga trip with Baja on the Fly to hit the famous waters off of Punta Colorada and Punta Arena. This was a great day and I got probably three dozen fish to the boat. Lots of Ladyfish, Pez Gallo, Jacks, a Sierra, a big Lookdown, a Topgaffsail Pompano, some pesky Needlefish, and an incidental pelican which ate a fish I was pulling in. Lance, my guide, was throwing a big bass topwater plug to tease in the fish and then I'd cast when fish got on the teaser. At times I'd just cast in the general fishy direction and catch fish without the teaser too. This technique worked as well or better than chumming with bait like I've done in the past.
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| Fish-on, the big jack on his run | 20 minutes later... |
At Punta Arena we ran into a lot of manta rays swimming along the beach and schools of rooster fish slamming bait onto the beach as well as schools of Ladyfish off a bit. The fishing here was incredible and I finally got a decent sized rooster, still a baby compared to the big ones that frequent this beach.
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| Punta Arena - mantas in the water | Pez Gallo |
All my fishing was done with a 9-weight Sage RPLXi matched with a Ross Canyon 5 reel and a 300-grain Rio Deep Sea line. Leaders were simply a 3' section of 30lbs test followed by a 2' section of 20lbs test "tippet". I didn't really need a bite tippet except maybe for the Sierra. Flies were small, the sardinas in the area appear to be having some trouble and most of the bait was 1.5-2.5" long. Thus #2-1 Chartruese Clousers, #2 Sea Habit bucktails, #6 Snot, and #4-6 small streamers were the ticket. Many fish were caught on the same flies I use at home for sea-run cutthroat and salmon.
