The Mar de Cortés is one of the world's great fishing grounds and we decided we couldn't end our time in Baja California without at least one fishing expedition. Morning is the best time to catch fish in the waters around La Paz -- the earlier the better -- so we decided to arrange the expedition through the hotel, which meant we'd get picked up there instead of having to drive ourselves to a distant rendezvous at some ungodly hour.
Captain Jack, the hotel's agent for such things, confirmed the wisdom of this when he told us we had to be ready to leave at quarter to five in the morning. We would be driving an hour to the beach we'd set off from. The 4:45 departure and the long drive sounded grim but encouraging -- we would be in the hands of people who were serious about catching fish.
We stumbled into a van with four other pescadores at the appointed hour and headed off towards the west, across the peninsula that forms one side of the Bahía de La Paz. The last part of the trip took us over bone-rattling unpaved roads to a remote beach lined with pangas. The sun had not yet risen but Jorge, the captain of the panga we'd rented, appeared out of the darkness and rounded us up, loaded rods and a drink cooler into his boat, dragged the boat into the ocean, helped us on board and set off towards the Isla Cerralvo, about a half hour away by sea.
Just off the island he rendezvous-ed with two men in a skiff who sold us our live bait for the day. The two men wore baseball caps and slickers and had the exact demeanor of Maine lobstermen -- with faces that seemed carved from granite. (People who work the sea tend to become mythological.)
The sun was well up by now, and our taciturn captain finally asked us what sort of fish we were looking to catch. "Fish to eat," I said. "Only fish to eat." His face lit up, he smiled happily and began replacing the big hooks on the poles with smaller ones. I don't know if he was happy because he thought catching fish to eat made sense, or because it meant he wouldn't have to deal with the sort of egos that can't be satisfied with anything less than impressive sporting trophies, but he was incredibly kind to us from then on, warm and solicitous.
There were several other chartered boats out in the channel looking for fish -- all open pangas like ours. Our captain looked around to see who was catching what and finally stopped at a likely spot. He baited our lines for us and spooled them out by hand to the indicated depth -- he said that the channel here was about 60 feet deep, its bottom lined with rocks which attracted marine life of all sorts.
It's always so dramatic and mysterious to set a fishing line out into the ocean -- it seems wildly improbable that it will ever connect with anything swimming down in that alien realm. I was so happy just to be out on the surface of that enchanting sea that I wouldn't have minded if we never caught a thing. But almost instantly Nora's rod began to jerk. "Fish!" shouted the captain, and slowly but surely Nora reeled in a big, beautiful dorado, also called a mahi mahi, one of the tastiest fish to be found in any ocean.
Then I hooked something really big -- it was all I could do to land it. But it turned out to be a bonito, a humongous bonito, which is not a good a good fish to eat. The captain said he would save it anyway to give to a friend, for shark bait.
Then Nora landed a smaller bonito, which we threw back, and I landed a good-sized tuna -- which of course we kept.
By this time Harry had become seasick. He was truly miserable but the beach was too far away to land him on -- an hour's round trip. Finally he threw up over the side, said he felt much better, took up his rod and immediately caught a nice tuna of his own.
Then his stomach turned on him again and he was more or less out of commission for the rest of the trip. (This explains why there are no cool photos here of our time out on the water.)
I caught a parga (a red snapper), a great eating fish, and a trigger fish, an odd-looking flat fish which I'd never heard of before. "It makes the best ceviche," our captain assured us -- and he was so right. Lee caught a tuna then, and we felt we'd had a most successful expedition.
Back on shore the captain (sharpening his knife above) filleted the fish and our driver put it in a cooler in the van. (I gave the captain my big tuna for his family -- we had more fish than we could eat ourselves in several meals.)
In La Paz that afternoon I took our fish to the restaurant at the hotel and asked the staff to cook up enough of it for dinner for four that evening and to freeze the rest. I asked them to make some ceviche out of the trigger fish. The waiters had to call the chef to identify the trigger fish, which they didn't recognize, but he beamed when he saw it. "Ceviche -- yes," he said.
That night we dined like kings -- like fishermen. Nora's dorado was generally acclaimed as the best-tasting fish of them all, which is saying a lot when the competition is freshly caught tuna and red snapper, and the ceviche made from the trigger fish was sublime. The ocean had been generous to us, and we took no more from it than we could use. Life was good.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]