Some real nice San Quintin calico bass...

SAN QUINTIN, B.C., MEXICO, RICHARD HOLLO, SEPT. 10, 2009 (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)-- ...On Sunday morning, I got up early and cleaned out the boat, dropped it off at Pedro's Pangas, and we headed back to California. The trip home was uneventful and it only took us 30 minutes to cross the border. Overall, it was a very fine trip.

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On Sept. 4, 2009, I made another trip to San Quintin with my new fishing compadre, Pedro Heringer. We did not get on the road until 2:00 p.m. which was bad timing for the upcoming 3-day weekend. Traffic crossing into Mexico was heavy and it took us almost an hour just to cross the border into Tijuana. Traffic in Tijuana and Ensenada was heavy.

We got up at 4:20 a.m. on Saturday morning and went to pick up the boat at Pedro’s Pangas. We chatted with Captain Hector for a few moments, but soon Pedro’s was bustling with anglers getting ready to leave so we made our exit.

Captain Pato put us in the water and we began heading down the bay close on the heels of Captain Juan Cook. We found plenty of bait and headed out of the bay. The bay and the mouth were dead calm, so we decided to head offshore to look for tuna.

I had checked the SST sea surface temperature charts the night before we left and there had been a sharp 72-degree water temperature break 10 miles out of the bay. At 10 miles we were only at 68 degrees water temperature, so we continued to move offshore with a target of finding at least 70-degree water.

At 15 miles out, we were in 69.8-degree water and we came across a large school of porpoise. We decided to put out the jigs and ran up to a porpoise school.

The jigs weren’t in the water for more than 5 minutes and both rods went off simultaneously! We boated 2 little football yellowfin and then looked around for the porpoise. The water was clear, blue, and as flat as I have ever seen 15 miles offshore. We ran back up to the porpoise.

The rainbow feather went down. I took the dead rod and began reeling as fast as I could and was met with a jarring strike. Another double! I called out our location on channel 6.

It’s amazing how efficient the local captains are. Within a half an hour we had 2 other San Quintin boats in sight.

We boated 8 tuna and farmed 3 in an hour and a half, and then the porpoise cleared the area in spectacular fashion. They leapfrogged high in the air in large groups throwing water in all directions. It looked like the water was exploding!

Pedro and I decided to head to south and then cut in towards the Baja coast at Socorro.

We had gone about a half mile south and spotted a marlin! We stopped and pitched mackerel, but it simply dropped below the surface. After about another half mile, we spotted another marlin! This one gave us the same treatment and we moved on happy to have had another first experience at San Quintin.

We trolled for another half hour and saw a few birds working to the east. We turned towards them and throttled up to get on them quickly. We had hit about 15 m.p.h. when suddenly the reels started to buzz. I thought we must have hit a piece of kelp, but it was another pair of chunky tuna! Fast little buggers!

With a full Mexican sportfishing limit of tuna in our bag, we ran into our faithful Socorro and quickly topped off with a limit of fat calico bass, red rockcod, and lingcod. It was another awesome fall day of fishing in San Quintin.

As we headed back towards San Quintin Bay, my gas gauge dropped below one-quarter tank. About 3 miles into the bay the motor suddenly ramped down and quit. We were out of gas.

We noticed a panga heading in from the mouth. We flagged him down. It was Captain Eddie of Garcia’s Pangas. He did not have any gas to spare, but he called his brother and then towed us out into the channel away from the shallow flats.

And a beautiful white seabass. PHOTOS COURTESY OF RICHARD HOLLO.

Within 30 minutes, Bertoldo showed up with 5 gallons of gas and we were headed for the ramp. Despite the embarrassment, we met a couple of new San Quintin captains and we tonto gringos were treated kindly and fairly. I paid for the gas and for the captains' gas and time, but it was a fraction of what I would have expected to pay if I had run out of gas 4 miles out of Dana Point.

Abel pulled us out of the water and we had our fish cleaned. We strapped the boat down for the run into town. We went to the north end of San Quintin to have some excellent shrimp tacos from El Cliente and on the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Pemex and filled the boat. My 60-gallon gas tank took 224 liters, or 59 and one-quarter gallons. Doh!

On Saturday, we decided to make a run to El Tranquilo based on advice we had gotten from Captain Hector, who said there were some white seabass and yellowtail just south of the boca, but the barracuda were so thick that it was almost impossible to keep a bait or lure in the water for more than just a few minutes.

It was considerably cooler than the day before and there was a healthy breeze blowing. The sardines were so thick on our usual bait grounds that we were able to put about 4-dozen sardines and mackerel in the tank in just over 15 minutes.

We made the run south in a building chop.

We stopped over one of the humps at Socorro to put some fish in the bag and then we continued on to Tranquilo but the area looked like a desert. There were no signs of birds or bait schools, only quiet, choppy, green water.

We found some areas of bull kelp on the fish finder and dropped down some live baits, but to no avail.

About noon, we gave up and headed back up to Socorro. Initially, we hit a lively bite with our sardines and boated several fish, but it quickly dried up. We were fortunate to finish up the day with a hefty 15-pound lingcod.

We headed back to the San Quintin boca at 2:00 p.m. into brutal, building swells. We got to the reported white seabass grounds at 2:30 p.m. only to find that everything had vanished. Apparently the stiff breeze and dropping temperatures had pushed them out of the area.

We learned at the ramp that it had been a slow day inshore although San Quintin boats that had gone offshore had done well on tuna again. We had managed to bag 18 fish with a couple of barracuda thrown in to give to guys at the fish cleaning table. Not bad for a “slow” day!

We got up early Sunday morning, put the boat away at Pedro’s Pangas, and headed north to beat the long weekend traffic. We took the Tecate route to avoid the crowds at Otay. The border crossing only took us 40 minutes.

The current exchange rate was around 13-to-1 and gas in both Ensenada and San Quintin was $2.16 per gallon for Magna Sin.

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