San Quintin, Mexico:
Local Fishing With Capt. Hector On The Charter Boat Rommy

Dec. 24, 2005, Eric Landesfeind,, San Quintin, Baja California, Mexico fishing:

My fiancee, Rachel Baker, and I fished two days in San Quintin this week. Both days were spent fishing with Captain Hector on the Rommy out of Pedro's Pangas.

On Monday, we headed out to fish at the 15 fathom spot for several very large bonito, 10 to 12 lbs., and a huge barracuda. While there, we saw several bird schools pop up and we chased them for about an hour. The fish were definitely yellowtail as we saw several come up crashing on bait, but the fish were moving too fast to get a good shot at them. Rachel managed to hook a yellow on a blue and white Tady 9, but the fish came off after a few minutes.

We later ran to fish at the 6 fathom spot where we found wide open lingcod, but we had to leave because the seals were too bad. This was the first time in my experience that I have ever seen seals eat lingcod. We even had one bite a 15 lb class ling in half on the way up.

We spent the rest of the day scratching away at nice reds and then made a final stop on some whitefish that were as wide open as I have ever seen. We easily caught 40-plus, 3 to 8 lb whitefish in about a half hour.

The second fishing day at San Quintin, we ran back through the zone that was holding the yellowtail, but found that they had vacated the area.

After that, we headed up to fish at the north end of Isla San Martin for a couple of big barracuda on the Rapalas and not much else. We gave up on the troll thing pretty quick as it was cold, foggy and boring.

We headed back out to fish at the 6 where I hooked a jumbo bonito on my first cast but was immediately set upon by several hungry seals. It seems like any of the pinnacles holding fish down there are foul with seals and practically unfishable.

We were pretty much out of ideas on what to try next, so we left it up to Hector to fish for whatever he wanted. He told us that he had a couple of deep water spots, 500-plus feet, that he wanted to try, so we ran out dropped our gangions.

What ensued, was some of the best red fishing I have ever experienced! It was all clean fishing for reds, no junk, and a handful of jumbo Loma Prietos, Arkansas Reds.

In just over an hour we caught probably 150 pounds of reds with the bulk of the fish in the 3 to 5 pound range with a few 8 to 9 pounders thrown in. We had to stop fishing because the fish had totally destroyed our gangions!

Anyway, after that we ran back over to the whitefish honey hole and loaded up again.

San Quintin fishing water temperatures were ice-cold. I'd have to imagine that they were in the high 50's.

Although we didn't catch any exotics, we had two beautiful days on the water at San Quintin with great weather and fun fishing. It was also nice to see Hector distribute a good portion of the catch (we gave him all of the fish we caught) to those in the area that weren't fortunate enough to be able to go out on a boat and catch fish of their own. It always amazes me at how people are always willing to share with others, a true example of the Christmas spirit.

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