ENSENADA:
Boating activity around Bahía de Todos Santos centers on bottom fishing during the cooler months and surface action from about May through November. In winter, boats stay close to home and drop bait and iron jigs for abundant rockcod, sheephead, ocean whitefish, and for the past season, a bonanza of lingcod that most old timers called the best in at least 25 years. Occasional runs of halibut and white seabass are also encountered from about April through about the end of September. Favorite bottom fishing spots include the shore just north of town, around the Islas Todos Santos, and around Punta Banda.
In summer, Ensenada boats can add yellowtail, bonita, calico bass, and barracuda to the near shore catch, or they can run offshore for early shots at albacore, yellowfin tuna, big eye tuna, bluefin tuna, dorado and marlin. Sometimes at Ensenada the offshore fish come in practically to the rocks, as happened last year when boats as close as two miles off Punta Banda scored on three species of tuna, yellowtail, and dorado all on the same day.
SAN QUINTIN:
Fishing at San Quintin is almost always good for something. The offshore runs are a little earlier than at Ensenada, and yellowtail tend to hang out more regularly than farther north. The bottom fishing rarely gets any worse than "good." Most of the time it's "great," and it often climbs into the "ludicrous" range. This is one place where you can catch plenty of fish whether you're paying attention or not.
If you launch your own boat at the Old Mill concrete ramp, plan on taking a guide with you the first few times that you exit the bay. A GPS unit helps. The channel is very tricky, and if you run aground on the extensive eel grass flats that lurk on either side, you're going to feel pretty dumb until the tide floats you off.
CABO SAN LUCAS:
More than any other part of Baja California, the Los Cabos Corridor from San Jose del Cabo to Cabo San Lucas itself has experienced a breathtaking growth rate that has all but obliterated the "old Baja." Here, multi-story hotels and golf courses pop up between visits, and unless you have a very good sense of direction, you may not even be able to find the street you're looking for because it's buried inside a large, new neighborhood.
But, the fishing remains, and very good it is. Off San Jose del Cabo is Baja's most reliable, year-round offshore fishing hole, the world famous double Gordo Banks. Within easy panga range at about six miles off shore, these high spots are simply plugged with resident bottom fish and are attractive to hordes of migratory tuna, dorado, wahoo, and marlin ranging into the 1,000-pound range. The Gordo Banks is an especially good area for the winter months because it lies in the wind shadow of the Sierra de la Laguna mountain range that forms the tip of Baja. In fact, that's how the first Los Cabos hotel came to be built. The Hotel Palmilla owes its existence to the fact that its builder, Rod Rodriguez, got tired of facing the winter winds at his other resort, Rancho las Cruces near La Paz.
At the very tip of Baja California, the former cannery town of Cabo San Lucas has a good-sized marina; a fantastic concentration of night life, hotels and restaurants; cruise ships arriving daily; an enormous fleet of independent cruisers and pangas; and fishing good enough to send out an incredible 50,000+ charter boats per year. For sport fishing, there is simply no other place in the world that even approaches Cabo, or "San Lucas," as the natives call it.
The reason for all this fishing activity is that Cabo San Lucas sits right on the meeting place of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean, and there is almost always good fishing on one side or the other, often both, for tuna, wahoo, dorado, and several kinds of billfish. While these are all worthy quarries, and the inshore fishery here isn't bad either, the engine that makes Cabo's sport fishing industry go is without a doubt the striped marlin. This fish's home ground is the famous "Striped Marlin Core Zone" that lies just off the southern tip of Baja California, and there are so many striped marlin caught-and-released here that at times it approaches a rather comical assembly-line situation. Does the client want to release ten marlin today? Well, why not, amigo? At Cabo, it just might happen!
EAST CAPE:
During the warmer months, East Cape offers a blast of fishing action on so many species it's not worth listing them all here. Suffice it to say that just about any significant resident or offshore fish you've ever heard of can usually be caught at one time or another between April and November.
This area is centered on Bahia de Palmas, about 70 miles up the Cortez coast from Cabo San Lucas, and its headquarters is the twin-village of Los Barriles-Buena Vista. Even though it's right on Mex 1, most people fly into Los Cabos International Airport and get a ride to East Cape in a taxi or hotel van.
Unlike any other area of Baja, all the major East Cape resort hotels operate their own fleets of cruisers and pangas. East Cape has remained faithful to the sport fishing business that was the original foundation of Baja tourism half a century ago. With no golf courses or night clubs, East Cape is a comfortable, up-to-date fishing town that still lives very close to the sea.
LA PAZ:
This charming capital city of the state of Baja California Sur is large enough so tourists can really "get lost" and mingle with the friendly Mexican population. Most activities are centered around the beautiful waterfront malecon that is lighted at night, and during the summer months this boulevard offers strollers a pleasant place to meet friends and enjoy a taco or an ice cream cone from the famous La Fuente shop near the municipal pier.
La Paz was once Baja's leading sport fishing destination. Local fishing operations do a wide-open business during the warmer months when migrating dorado, tuna, roosterfish, and billfish come up the channel between the Baja mainland and nearby Isla Cerralvo to mingle with the resident pargo, leopard grouper, and other reef species. On the "south side of the hill" is Punta Arenas, which looks directly out at Isla Cerralvo and sits right on top of one of the world's best roosterfish holes. This hotel operates its own fleet of pangas.
Besides fishing, La Paz offers Old World charm, and a stately yet vibrant Mexican lifestyle found nowhere else in Baja. It's a great place to walk the cobblestone streets, sit on a bench, or cruise the narrow alleys looking for bargains in the multitude of shops where few tourists go.
BAHIA DE LOS ANGELES:
"L.A. Bay," as Bahia de los Angeles is usually called, got Mex 1's first paved side road back in 1976, and you would think that development would have happened very quickly after that. But nope, for a variety of reasons, this breathtakingly beautiful bay seems like a relic of Baja's early days, preserved in some kind of time warp.
In summer, L.A. Bay can be insufferably hot. It can be pretty dang cold in winter. And look out when the wind decides to blow. Because of the topography of the mountains surrounding the bay, the west wind, especially, can go from zero to over 50 knots in a matter of minutes.
But when it's on good behavior, this is one of the most beautiful places in Baja, with it's many islands and stark desert rock mountains, and it grows on you.
The fishing at Bahia de los Angeles was just about wiped out in the 1970s by a netting colony at Punta la Gringa on the north side of the bay, but since then it has made a modest comeback, and there were so many yellowtail here anyway, you can still catch them up to about 45 pounds when things are right in the spring, summer, and fall. The rest of the time, there's decent bottom fishing (between wind storms), with occasional flurries of resident yellowtail to about 20 pounds.
There are no fishing fleets at L.A. Bay, but it is home to perhaps a dozen pangueros who fish both commercially and with sport fishing clients. In addition to the classic Casa Diaz, there are a number of other lodging accommodations, and boats can always be arranged through them.
SAN FELIPE:
This pleasant and happy-feeling northern Baja town of San Felipe is located 125 easy miles south of the border from Calexico on Mex 5, not Mex 1. Unlike most Baja towns, San Felipe is relatively new. It was established in the 1920s as a fish camp for the totuaba, a giant relative of the white seabass that grew to over 200 pounds in weight and once spawned by the millions in the shallow estuaries of the Colorado River.
Today the totuaba are endangered, and the rest of the fishing around San Felipe has been pretty much obliterated by gill nets and shrimp trawling. You can still catch a few croakers or corvina from the pangas that can be rented on the beach front malecon, but 90 percent of the time it isn't worth the trouble unless you are entertaining small kids.
Modern San Felipe is a resort town that specializes in frantic action around Easter and spring break for college students, when the weather is just about perfect for beach frolicking and general carousing of all kinds, and perhaps because of its small size and proximity to the border, it's one of the friendliest places in Baja California.
Sport fishing at San Felipe today centers around the voyages of four boats from 85 feet long to 115 feet long that are known as panga motherships. These load either six or nine pangas on deck and travel down to the Midriff Islands a few hundred miles south. There, the pangas are unloaded, and clients fish three per skiff for yellowtail, cabrilla, snapper, and a host of bottom fish. The action is very good at the islands, and catches are usually heavy. These mothership trips run from April to about October, and sometimes they go as far south as La Paz, around the tip of Baja to Magdalena Bay, or even 200 miles south of Cabo San Lucas to the Revillagigedo Islands (this fishery was recently closed by the Mexican government).
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