Santa Rosalia, Mexico:
Sailfish Caught At Isla Tortuga In Mixed Sportfishing Conditions

Oct. 2, 2004, Mike Kanzler, Isla San Marcos, Santa Rosalia, Baja fishing, Mexico:

It is October, but the fishing still feels like September, oh well, maybe another week or so.

Santa Rosalia weather has been very nice the whole week except for today, wind wise anyway. The week saw no wind, flat sea conditions and mild air temps, pleasant cool mornings of 65-68 degrees, with mildly hot days reaching mid to high 80s, but with little to no humidity. Today, Saturday, Santa Rosalia saw slightly cooler temps overall, with west-northwest winds to 17 knots making for bumper water conditions.

Santa Rosalia fishing water temps still hot, 82-86 degrees, and good vis of 35-60 feet. Another note on water is the high amount of "stingers," making diving unbearable for those not wanting to use Lycra protective suits.

Now the fishing part. Let me start with my short week, gas run on Monday as usual. Then the next day, take a solo run to fish the reef of San Marcos island. Yes it was on the full moon. Drew a strike. Very disheartening. With that I decided to take a longer break from fishing and let some of the other fishermen here take a crack at it.

During the week I listened to the radio to see if anything started to happen on the now desert sea. Nope, dead. Guys where even struggling with bait numbers during the early mornings! One boat did catch a few dorado (also mahi-mahi or dolphinfish) north of Santa Rosalia around the Caleta de Santa Rosalia area. Heard it was Julie and "Wild Bill" Westendorff. They managed a 15 pound fish and a few smaller ones totaling five for the day keeping only the two larger ones to eat. Other than that not much from anybody during the week.

I had to take another attempt at Tortuga island. Someone's got to. Took Alan Lewis with me today. He ran over in his boat to the island, then jumped on my boat and off we go.

To be sure we don't struggle with bait, made a line for Santa Rosalia marina so that we be able to catch what we needed in the dark and be fishing Tortuga earlier in the morning hours; don't want to miss nothing.

Halfway there, noted wind form the northwest and a few white caps starting to form, not good. What you going to do? Keep going and deal with it. Once there, tried the usual spots, all deep, and found it extremely hard to stay on the spot.

Alan did manage to catch a small yellowtail and one nice 10 pound barred pargo. Fished about three more hours and nothing doing. However, we did notice billfish breezing near by. Got nothing else to do. Tied on some heavy shock leaders, pinned some big mackerel on, started the boat and slow trolled. Took about 10 minutes. My rod went off. Alan's right after that, double hook up on sailfish. However my fish sawed off Alan's and it became a single. Fought the fish for 15 minutes and had it boat side, took some photos, then released her in good shape. Twenty-five ticks on the clock later and it's Alan's turn, nice sailfish doing the tailwalk around the boat. More photos, released once more. That's that. Couldn't get a break on the wind at Tortuga for any shot with the bottom fish, for the second time there in the last two weeks, but did find out there's still plenty of billfish for those wishing to fish for them.

San Lucas cove trailer park now has municipal water for the showers, which means no worries if the guys running the camp pumped water in the tank for showers. There's also a tap with high pressure to even wash your boat off before you leave.

Friday night here on Isla San Marcos we had a 10 p.m. curfew to allow spraying of pesticide to kill mosquitos that may be carrying Dengue fever, which is very close to yellow fever and can be fatal for elderly and younger children.

Well there goes another week, hope next one will be better than this.

San Lucas Cove, Baja California Sur, Mexico

AT SAN LUCAS COVE--The Dos Amigos trailer park on the shore of San Lucas Cove near Santa Rosalia. Isla San Marcos' Mike Kanzler describes it: "Nice place, great palapas real clean, only down side is the big sand bar right in front, the one that nearly blocks the cove entrance. Guess that's why not a lot of people stay there, people with boats, anyway. Too bad, more quite and pretty." Photo courtesy Mike Kanzler.

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