Since moving down here to Rosarito, I’ve made it my business to fish the various Baja California spots and become familiar with the top captains and outfits in each fishing zone. I’ve put myself out there, and had some memorable experiences. Through writing about those experiences, I get introduced to new people, fish new venues and have new adventures to share. It’s a virtuous cycle.
Back in February of this year, my buddy Kenny Dean, co-owner of T-Bird Sportfishing, invited me down to fish Ensenada with him. Kenny has a home in San Diego, but he’s building on a property in Punta Banda…near where the sportfishing outfits are based.
Kenny set-up the trip and we had a great day of rockfishing with Blackfin Sportfishing. Notably, both Kenny and I had 4 lingcod apiece (limit of any one species is 5 in Mexico). We would have gotten a full limit, had we not run out of bait, but still…pretty awesome.
Anyway, because of that trip, I met Victor Matzunaga, the owner of Blackfin. When Kenny, Joe Gallardo of Salty Addicts and Victor hatched the idea of putting together a panga tournament, I was invited out to fish with Kenny, and Joe’s team. Our fourth, was Bill Vail, a fishing buddy of Joe’s. The battle occurred this last Saturday, July 30th.
Nine teams of 4 participated. The rules were simple. Each contestant kicked in $100, and each team weighed in their combined 4 biggest fish. Winner take all of the $3600 jackpot. Nobody was allowed to leave the immediate launch ramp area before 6am. And each team had to make weigh-in by 5pm or be disqualified.
We drew Capt. Ignacio “Nacho” Duarte (above) for our team.
The bluefin fishing (right) has been slowing down lately for the Punta Banda outfits after an epic run that had lasted much longer than last season. Knowing this fact, I discussed a strategy with Kenny prior to Saturday of trolling/paddy fishing heading toward the Coronados. Maybe we’d get lucky with a bluefin on the way up or back. Boats have been getting yellows at the islands and maybe we could try to get a black seabass while we were there too. As it turned out, Nacho had some specific intel about fishing for yellows at the islands, so he was down with that gameplan and brought extra gas to make it happen.
On the way up we saw a lot of paddies, but the water temperature was in the low 60’s. Consequently, we saw some fish, but they weren’t in a biting mood. The best stop on the way up was after seeing birds working. We rolled up on them and boiling fish could be seen below. We threw surface iron/colt snipers at them and they turned out to be nice sized bonito. I put 2 on the boat using my Fishing Syndicate 90J jig stick/Tranx 500HG surface iron setup. We got a couple more to make sure we at least had 4 fish to weigh-in and proceeded on.
I was excited to fish the pens. They don’t let American boats fish around there, but they give a pass to the locals to do it. Nacho was looking for his source of info. We found them fishing very tight to one of the pens. As we rolled up, one angler on their boat was hooked up. He scored on dead sardine…matching the feed of the bluefin inside the pen. They gave us a pass of their dead bait and we proceeded to fish it on heavy dropper loops (Nacho said minimum 80!). We would find out later why the recommendation of the heavy rope…
Looking into the water there was a ton of life. Roving schools of very large mackerel were everywhere. Log barracuda chased them around. Big sea lions were also patrolling the area. Nacho said to fish the dead sardine right on the bottom. We kept to his recommendation, but an hour later Nacho was the only one to get bit (and land) a fish. We noticed the guys from the Ahuevo Team nearby. They were getting bit on yo-yo jigs. I guess at the end of the day, even when they’re on dead bait, yellows still prefer that fast movement.
We decided to follow their lead. Bill broke the ice using a full size Salas 6x in yellow/green. We were only in 80 feet of water, with little current. I opted for a blue/white Salas 7x Jr heavy on a Fishing Syndicate 760H/Trinidad 30A yo-yo combo. The line was 65# braid to a short 50# fluoro topshot (for the abrasion resistance).
I got bit next. Luckily we had drifted a little bit away from the pen and I had some cushion. My fish immediately headed toward a rope that was stretched between two pens. I had to tighten down my drag, while maintaining pressure with the rod, to slow it down. I was able to turn it, but the fish had caught the attention of a nearby sea lion. It was a race to the boat. Luckily, I won.
Kenny was the big winner though. He also got bit on a junior size blue/white jig (Iron Man?), and managed to get his fish into the boat. It was larger than the other 3. I tried doing a heavy hamburguesa setup hoping for a black seabass after landing my yellow. No love. With Kenny’s yellow though, we were able to upgrade our Top 4 fish to all yellows.
It was around 2pm. We were a long way from home, and needed to be back by 5 in order to qualify with our fish. We pointed south and started making our way back. Along the way we stopped on a paddy. It looked empty, but Bill managed to pull a small yellow off it. Nacho spotted a marlin and we paid it some attention for awhile. We turned around and dragged trolling lures by it, but it wasn’t interested. We dropped back a couple live mackerels to see if that might spark an interest. No luck with that either. Nacho said we needed a bigger lure, but stupid me…I didn’t think to bring marlin lures for this trip.
We got back to the ramp and weighed in our yellows. We wouldn’t find out where we placed, or even our combined weight until the dinner/award ceremony.
Victor made some amazing food, which I will write about over on Baja Salty.
We ended up with a combined weight of 54.54 lbs. The team shown up top beat us by exactly 6 lbs…if only we could’ve gotten a black or the marlin to go. Team Ahuevo (below) took 3rd.
Thanks to everyone involved. It was far from wide, but it was a fun day and cool experience fishing by the pens. That was a thrill ride for sure! Looking forward to doing it again next year.
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