IT'S FOR REELS! FISHING ACTION FOR BIG ENSENADA BONITO

July 2-3, 2006, It's 4 Reels! fishing trip out of Marina Coral, Ensenada, Mexico:

With the family at my buddy's beach house just north of Ensenada, I launched my boat It's 4 Reels! at Marina Coral on Saturday and left it in a slip rather than try to launch early the next morning. I headed back to the house and proceeded to catch 4 Sand Bass right off the balcony.

On Sunday I arrived at Marina Coral around 6:30 a.m. and loaded up the rocket launchers and got It's 4 Reels! ready for battle.

I headed into the Ensenada marina and found Mike Richardson's bait barge. He is next to the old Catalina sunken boat which is just south of the Ensenada cruise ship docks.

I picked up a mix of anchovies and mini mackerel. The anchovies were a mixture of 2 eyes and pinheads with some nice size hook baits mixed in.

The fishing plan was to fish local for a bit and see if conditions would allow us to head offshore of Ensenada. We found the Gordo's and Sergio party boats just north of Marina Coral and picked a few Sand Bass, 1 nice Rockfish and a nice 3 pound Calico Bass that hit a Berkely Squid Gulp in 60 to 70 feet of water.

We decided to head for Isla Todos Santos and do some trolling. On the way to the island we spotted a nice kelp paddy that had bonito boiling around it. My wife Kay picked up a nice 7 pounder. About a mile from the island we hooked up again for 2 bonito and 1 log Barracuda,

I decided to head offshore as conditions were just beautiful. But we didn't see one kelp paddy and we were back at the dock at 3:30 p.m.

Ed Shubin and Ed Jr. came to fish with me on Monday.

The fishing plan was to head to the Ensenada Lower 500 spot, as radio reports from the previous day weren't to good for the 1010 and the Double 220's.

We found our first kelp paddy 4 to 5 miles from the Lower 500 spot and it was loaded with some hard fighting firecracker Yellowtail.

Left the paddy and the rest of the day consisted of hooking up with all the 6 to 10 pound Bonito you wanted. These fish were boiling and free swimming everywhere between the Lower 500 and the 238 spot. I heard reports of Bonito being caught up to 18 pounds! I definitely saw some in the 14 pound class swimming just off the bow of our boat.

Fishing conditions were beautiful offshore of Ensenada, as what little swell died out by 11 a.m.

Ensenada offshore water temperatures ranged to about 66.7 to 70.0-plus closer in. We decided to head in after not finding a single decent size paddy after our first one in the morning.

It was a very fun fishing trip and I'm pretty sore from pulling on all those fish. It was good to see the return of the Bonito both in size and quantity.

(See "Mexico Fishing News" online for current fishing reports, photos, weather, and water temperatures from Ensenada and other major Mexican sportfishing areas. Vacation travel articles, fishing maps and seasonal calendars, and fishing related information for Ensenada may be found at Mexfish.com's main Ensenada page.