Santa Rosalia, Mexico:
A Slow Summer Fishing Week With Mixed Weather Conditions

Aug. 6, 2005, Mike Kanzler, Isla San Marcos, Santa Rosalia, Baja California Sur, Mexico Fishing:

It was a week of slow fishing and one day of wild weather at Santa Rosalia.

The overall weather has been pretty good in the Santa Rosalia area, with only one bad day of wind and rain from a sudden micro burst storm and I'll tell you this, it was 100 percent white knuckle. Air temperatures are in the low 80s for the mornings and to 90s for the daylight hours. Water temperatures are hot, 83-85 degrees all the way around, with 30-60 feet of visibility.

The fishing this week was overall pretty slow.

I did have a couple go on a three-day run at the beginning of the week. We started fishing on Monday, with Mark Shannon and his wife Leslie. It was a pleasure the whole time! Really great people and one day of high seas adventure. Mark is a artificial lure addict, and casting poppers is his forte. However, at the present time of year there's just not that much surface action to speak of other than Dorado and those are pretty thin this year.

The first day, we ran for Isla Tortuga to fish plastic and try some poppers to see if we could get the cabrilla to bite. We did okay considering the water was like a bath tub out there.

We caught and released about 20 fish, and Mark is a 100 percent catch and release fisherman. We also tried fishing some of his Japanese iron, while I fished old school Salas and produced one nice Sawtail Grouper of about 25 pounds. On the way back we found some paddies and Mark got slammed on one of the poppers. It's exciting to see those fish crash that lure.

The next day I had to beg them to fish bait for yellowtail on the north end of San Marcos island and they gave in, with Leslie catching a nice mid 20 pound forkie, so now the seal shows up, and it's time to go paddy hopping and popping. But there's a light breeze coming from the east and cloud cover in the same direction, all normal for this time of year. This made it hard to see the weeds and current breaks, so we decided to head north.

This would be a big mistake later on.

We ended up fishing in the water of Caleta de Santa Maria, about 10 miles north of Santa Rosalia, and after going all that way, never saw any weeds or fish.

Then things started changing. Big popcorn cumulous clouds were forming all over, out of nowhere, and then lighting overhead, but the water was an eerie calm.

We decided to start back, but 10 minutes and 7 miles short of Santa Rosalia all hell broke loose!

It was on us. The winds went from 0 to 60 knots in the drop of a hat! I've never seen it get that bad and close to hurricane CAT 1 in my 13 years living here.

It took us close to an hour to make the 7 miles to safety in Santa Rosalia harbor. We sat it out for nearly two more hours and took a bumpy ride back to San Lucas Cove where I found out just how windy it was. Sid Lindsay's palapa was pulled out of the ground, ripped through his tarps and bounced over his truck! He'll be bummed when he gets back from the States.

On fishing day three--yeah, they went fishing again after all that, ha ha-- we went to Isla Tortuga and found very slow fishing, but on the way back did hit a nice paddy full of Dorado and had some popper action until the fish wised up. Mark and Leslie where overall happy, but would like to return when fishing is on the up side next year.

Today, I took the boy fishing, Michael Jr., and we had fun with the seal stealing our bait, but still managed to catch a pair of healthy deep water Yellowtail and some bonita on iron.

Well, another summer fishing week has gone by at Santa Rosalia, and I can't wait until fall.

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