My brother Kevin and I went down to Puertecitos from Sunday to Thursday (June 21 - 25). Our goal was to spearfish most of the time, but the weather, wind, water and tides weren't working with us.
The first day we set up camp at Playa Escondida and took our kayaks out before the sun went down. We caught some of the usual fish, (bass, triggers, sierra), but Kevin did end up catching a bonefish... on a friggin crankbait!
The next morning we woke up before the sunrise to go out on Dale's panga for a days spearing.
The sunrises in Baja are something else.
We cruised out to the islands in the morning after a few delays. The panguero, Nati, hadn't got his gas and his truck from San Felipe so we had to wait a couple hours before we left. Finally, when we were set to go, the tide was too low to launch at the boat ramp. Normally we would have said Fuck It, and go another day, but it's Baja and when the weather is good you have to go. We ended up getting his other truck, and launching straight off the beach back at our camp.
We got out to the islands and the clarity was at best 10 feet in most spots. It was better in some, but overall pretty bad. We worked it pretty hard and managed to get 3 leopard grouper, 1 BIG corvina and 1 graybar grunt. I have never eaten grunt before.... boy was that fish good.
We saw some big tails and big shadows out in the distance. Kevin had one fish crack it's tail right in front of him and he said he could hear it like a whip, then it left a huge cloud of sand in it's path. I missed a quick hip-shot on a BIG (15lb +) pargo. The bigger fish were out there but it was real tough with the bad vis and the 24 foot tide swings.
My First Grouper
My Larger Gouper
Kev's Grouper and Corvina
Kev's big ass Graybar Grunt
The wind wasn't bad the first day, but the next couple days it would come up out of nowhere and blow for a couple hours, then retreat. One night we went to bed with no wind and cool weather. An hour later the wind came up and it was HOT. My tent didn't offer much protection from the sand so we had to build a barrier around the tent to keep myself from getting sand blasted. It didn't work so well. I had sand ALL OVER the place.
We had some killer, camp Q'ed, fresh fish tacos. ( They were more like burritos that you couldn't close)
Met a dog named "Trio" that hung out with us all day Tuesday. His owner, and caretaker of the camp "Pedro", was in San Felipe all day. Such a sweet dog. He enjoyed fishing, swimming, resting, and kayaking with us.
He hopped up on both Kevin and I's yaks all on his own and paddled around with us for a while.
It ended up being an awesome trip. Even though we weren't able to do any shore dives, we just kayaked, fished, and swam the rest of the days, so it was no big deal. It was hot, sunny, fishy and cloudless the whole time down there. Air was in the 90°-103°(inland) range. Water was in the 78°-81° range.
The road to San Felipe is getting worked on, so there was a dirt road detour for about ten miles. We went south of Puertecitos, past El Hurfanito, and the road was passable for a truck. The paved road goes a few miles south of town now, but it's dirt after that. Some stretches are really rough.
We did some fishing and swimming around El Hurfanito.
Here is a link to a photo album of the trip -
QuickGal
And a video that Kevin put together-
Puertecitos Video
Our Baja Fever still isn't cured. Still looking for those bigger fish.
Thanks Dale for hooking us up on the boat. Will do it again.
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