The road to PV (11/22-12/2)

[Hard Core]

It’s a long one, but here’s my story…

I started on this journey after my first fishing trip aboard my friend’s Cabo 35 off of PV in Oct. of 2005. I decided to ‘invest’ in a property down in that area, and settled on a condo in Punta Esmeralda in La Cruz. It took them awhile to build it, and for us to work through the kinks. After fishing a few more times with the local experts, I decided to get a boat of my own, having owned several in the past fishing offshore in SoCal, Oregon, and other areas.

I wanted to get a trailerable boat to cut down on maintenance given my limited opportunities to come down, so I got a Parker ’07 deep-vee walkaround. I liked the idea of the hardtop with removable windows to keep cool, and the large fishing cockpit (for its size).

I decided to rig it myself, and spent a solid year installing all the electronics, outriggers, rod holders, tuna form tubes, and two 32 gallon bait tanks. I spend a lot of time thinking about where to mount stuff to maximize space and fishability. I then started melting my credit card on tackle of every sort, Calstar rods, Tiagra 50Ws, Saltists with aftermarket drags, and riggings of every sort. I finished off with a mountain of spare parts for the boat, trailer, and Yammies, and picked up an ’02 Suburban with a 8.1l to use a tow rig and leave permanently in PV. I had that thing totally gone through to ensure it was reliable.

Two of us departed on 11/21 from Portland arriving at our 3^rd man’s house in Newport Beach at 3AM. We averaged 61MPH including stops. We used that day to recover and get the fluids changed one last time in the suburban. We departed on Sunday 11/22 to Nogales, Arizona, by way of San Diego for one last credit card melting session on tackle.

We got into Nogales about 10PM, crashed, and crossed the border on 11/23 about 7AM. We arrived at the immigration office and got IVTs, and then went to the Banjercito office to check the boat and vehicle through. I had already gotten the import permit for the boat, after two attempts and big headaches, as they had forgotten the trailer. I was again told the permit was done incorrectly. After arguing with that bitch for awhile, I went and talked to the federallies, who said it was fine, “adelante”, so off we went. We took turns driving and finally arrived in Mazatlan after pounding our way down those roads at midnight. Several gas stations tried to rip us off including swapping a 500 peso note for a 50 peso note, but I caught him and the older guy gave me my change avoiding a confrontation.

On 11/24 we got up and started checking out the trailer as it was squeaking extensively as we had pulled into Mazatlan. We found that two bearing buddies were gone, every bolt on the trailer was loose including the massive bolt that holds the tandem axle rocker was hanging by a thread. My two friends took off to secure a new bolt and nut, while I wrenched on everything I could. We were able to replace the bearing buddies, as I was carrying a mountain of spare parts for the boat and trailer. If that rocker assembly had come loose on a turn, I can’t imagine what a shit storm we would have had to deal with. With the bolt secured off we went.

We wanted to get out of Mazatlan in a hurry, and we had seen no shortage of Pemex’s on the drive down, we skipped getting fuel as we had ½ tank. Big mistake, we ran out of gas 40 miles from Tepic, having seen no gas stations for 150 miles. Of course, at the toll gate, they carry emergency fuel, so we snag 5 gallons, no problem, I’m used to $5/gallon gas. Off we go again and pull into Tepic on fumes. The burb took 39.3 of 40 gallons.

We were going up a huge grade when the check engine light came on, both the tranny temp and engine temp gauges were almost in the red. We soon figured out it was likely that we did not have the tranny in tow/haul mode, once engaged, we stayed in the green the entire drive.

After a bumpy ride through town on cobble stone streets with the trailer shuddering and squeaking and squawking, we entered the jungle 2 lane road. We didn't do more than 30MPH, and we felt the trailer pushing us around. It ended up we had split a brake line, so we were now pulling or more like getting pushed by a 11,000 boat/trailer on the worst part of the drive. We had semis passing us and roaring by in the oncoming lanes around turns, with inches between them and the boat. It was hard to look back at the boat and watch those rigs barrel past with inches to spare.

We pulled into PV and paid the security guys at my condo to watch the boat. They took us to the cleaners as far as tips goes, but we were too tired to deal with it. We had to drink quite a few beers and tequila to recover.

11/26 – We started getting the gear all rigged, and got the boat checked into dry storage at Paradize Village, and got someone to start scrubbing the boat down. It was filthy. We found out the ramp was tidal, so we could not launch until the next day at 7AM.

11/27 we launched, and shuttled the boat and truck over to La Cruz marina, and secured a slip for 4 nights, and re-fueled at their new gas dock. We shot out to the rock, and dragged some skippies around for awhile, but it was a late start, and we had no cabbies, so we threw in the towel.

11/28 - We decided to hire a guide for the second day to get this trip kick-started. His name was ChinaMan, or Luis. It was a rough ride out and a very long hard day. We left at 6AM, pitch black, and found the caballito guy about 5 miles south of the marina. We picked up 40 of them. We then headed out, and soon picked up washing machine chop. The wind had been 10-15 all night. It got pretty bad, we were going 16 knots and soon slowed to 14.

We had the Mexican Navy stop us and circle us in a mean looking battle wagon with multiple deck mounted machine guns and guys with automatic rifles. They circled us, checking our registration and waved us on. I was glad I had my boat USCG documented at that point.

The weather never let up all day. Our deck hand got sick and puked over the side twice, and passed out in the cabin for two hours. The rest of the crew was rock solid being used to washing machine shit tuna fishing off of Oregon. We quickly made 6 skippies, and deployed only two bridled because of the wind. We trolled El Banco for 3 hours. Not much signs of life and we had 6 factory size tuna seiners from Mazatlan patrolling the bank were within sight or radar range with helicopters. There was definitely life there, but it was too harassed to bite. We had a missed strike on a skipjack by a pargo, major teeth marks, the skippie was wrecked.

We then decided to troll to the rock, since it was so sloppy, so we quickly rigged a full artificial skirt spread, some big stuff in the mix. About an hour into it, everyone was dozing, and the starboard rigger went off and the Tiagra 50W started screaming. We dumped half the spool of 200lb hollow core, and my friend was already harnessed up and started to battle the fish. It gave a great greyhound run across the surface, and then we settled into the fight. Chasing the fish, letting it take line, and then finally bottoming out the drag. When we were getting close with color, all of the sudden the fight was ended. Unfortunately, this Blue Marlin got tail wrapped and died being pulled backwards towards the end. We intentionally went to a high drag setting to get the fish in after the 30min mark, but we ended up with a marlin on the deck, muerto.

We got the fish on the boat, it took all four guys to get her over the rail, and we felt bad for a bit. Chinaman assured us every chunk of meat would be eaten, and he took extreme care cleaning that fish for two hours to get every scrap of meat. We also took about 10 lbs of it, and iced it immediately, and made some killer ceviche with it.

11/29 - We woke up on day 3 to even stronger winds and a very sloppy ocean with 3-4 wind chop, white caps coming from all directions. We had the windows up this time, so we didn't get soaked, but it was a long ride out at 15 knots.

We got to the Rock and there were birds and boils everywhere, some decent sized tuna and lots of dodos. We started slow trolling caballitos and caught all the dodos we would eat, and then started chunking. Unfortunately, the drift was very fast. I tried to deploy the kite off the bow, but the boat was doing 2.5 knots so it kept pulling the bait under the boat. We fished cabbies and chunks for several hours. We then deployed the spread of jigs and trolled in. Tough day, again, we didn't hear anything good at the docks.

11/30 - We decided to try inshore fishing on day 4. We ran in off the beach and jigged up and filled both bait tanks with killer sardines, cabbies, and some smaller other baits. We ran out off Sayulita about 20 mile run and tried for dodos. Saw a marlin jumper and some other things, so we put out some jigs for nada. We ran in right to the beach and dragged sardines for a couple of hours. We had one good take on what bit like a rooster. It picked it up, stopped, I could feel it chewing, and then nothing. We had another bite that just cleaned off the hook and everything and never even pulled line, must have been a barracuda. The ocean was again sloppy in the morning, but calmed down a bit by the afternoon. If we had a day 5 it would like be some good fishing weather, but we had to leave.

We stopped for a free dive on the way in, and had a few beers.

12/1 - We got up late, the trip was catching up with us, especially yours truly. The high tide was at 9:47AM, so we had one guy shuttling the suburban, while my friend and I ran the boat over to Paradise Village. We had only 15 minutes to fish, and we had been broken off on a swimbait on the bottom of his sabiki rig the day before, so I stopped on a huge ball of bait and deployed a flylined bait, while my friend worked a swimbait off the bottom. After 5 minutes of this, my friend says "there he is", and he bendo with a hard fighting fish. Ended up after 10 minutes being a beautiful Jack Crevalle (toro). After a couple quick pics, we let him swim away.

We got the ramp and hauled the boat, and put in a few hours washing and waxing. Overall, the boat fared very well on the drive, no damage, and it is rigged perfectly and well planned, no regrets on the engineering that we put into the rigging (dual bait tanks, outriggers, tuna tubes, electronics, rod holders, etc.). We covered the engines and put on the full length cover, so it will be ready to go in late December for the next trip.

I ran into Aluminator at the airport, good talking with you, I had followed his reports for years back in the SoCal days.

Cheers
R/V Hard Core
PV Mex via Portland, OR

[Cornfed]

The definiton of EPIC....also see BADASS.

[Jaydog]

Awesome read and cool pics. Congratulations on all the hard work and investing you've done, payback time!!! Enjoy yourself.

[richmake]

First of all, your obviously single cause nobody's wife is gonna let a guy live a dream like that...ohya you bet I'm jealous as all hell...
Congrats on the trip and remember one thing...It don't matter any more how things turn out...your living the dream my friend and like Cornfed said " badass"

[victormanuel]

nice boat and beutiful pic of the rock

saludos

[5 for Fighting]

Barnes’ is living the dream. Way to make it happen bro, I know at times the sky was dark but you never took your eye off the prize. Congrats! Can’t want to get down there with you.

[MY4TUNA]

What did you hook the blue with with , live bait or plastic ?

[DawnPatrol]

Beautiful read and great pics... and yes, us married guys and/or ones that are still grinding away at our businesses are jealous (at least I am)..
How large would you estimate the size of that Blue?

[Hard Core]

Thanks for all the comments, I really appreciate it. I'm suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms after getting back. It sounds like we made the wrong decision staying inside that last day based on other reports. Oh well, that's fishing...

We got it on an jig, it's sitting on top of its head in one of the pics. Her stomach was totally empty.

I'm no marlin expert, I've only caught one blue on light tackle that I released that was a bit smaller than this one so I don't have any good data to base it on. Chinaman thought 160-170 kilos, I would have said mid 300 lb's, but that's purely a guess given what it took to pull it over the rail.

[Brig]

Bitchen Trip. Living the Dream.

[watch-n-learn]

Awsome report! You must have a really nice camera too.

oh and how long was the Marlin dead for before you plopped the jig back in its mouth?

[bigdaddyjon]

very nice !!! if you need a friend let me know .