Loreto fishing adventure

Loreto is on the non-Pacific side of the 1500km long Baja peninsula, that is, the sea of Cortez that separates Baja from mainland Mexico. It’s quite a touristy town, the smell of gringo hits you straight away as you head into the main part of town, which fronts a long beachfront esplanade, or Malecon as they are called. Loreto’s backdrop is a beautiful range of bald, jagged mountains that make up part of Baja’s spine.

We met a Canadian couple, Lance and Jennifer, who were trading freezing temperatures in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada for the Baja sun. They had travelled in Mexico many times before, so their local knowledge definitely came in handy!

A brief visit to the town jetty, where Mexican fisherman dock their boats and smoky blue pelicans gather to dive bomb fish, established that Jorge would take us out fishing on his boat the following day.

 

 Jorge the fishing man

The boat, slightly larger than a tinnie, seated five comfortably. Jorge provided the bait and tackle, and the boat even had a compartment filled with seawater to stow away fish once they were caught. 

 Trawling for fishies

It did not take long to begin filling the compartment. We sped out to a nearby island across the bright blue ocean, calmly rippling like a carpet of crushed velvet. Trawling up and down, it did not take long for the fish to take bites at the lures. Within minutes we had hauled in our first few fish of the day. 

Bonita bonito

By lunchtime, the compartment was heaving with barracuda, a type of Spanish mackerel called a Sierra, yellow tail and a brownish coloured local fish known as a Cabrilla. In total we caught over 20 fish, far too many for us to cook for dinner, so Jorge and his cronies took the rest off our hands. 

 Cabrilla 

It was pretty lazy fishing really. Jorge baited up the rods, we dropped them in and let them out, then waited for the fish to bite, which happened in a matter of minutes. The only thing we had to do was reel them in and hope they didn’t fight back too hard.

 Catch of the day

Lunching on the island, we snorkelled right off the beach, where there were dozens of types of brightly coloured fish, although their habitat was a shelf of dull-looking rocks rather than a dazzling coral reef. We circumnavigated the island after lunch to check out a colony of sea lions living off the rocks where sea birds such as ospreys and the hilariously named blue footed booby nest.

There was quite a bit of swell crashing onto the rocks on this side of the island, which made me seasick. Jennifer instructed me to keep my focus on the horizon, which worked surprisingly well although I still thought I was going to throw up the whole time. Luckily I managed to stave it off, and the awful feeling went away once we began heading closer to shore.

Our guesthouse, Posada San Martin, was blessed with a wood fire barbeque in its dusty back courtyard. We cooked the biggest four of the fish whole stuffed with garlic, onion and chillies and wrapped with tin foil. There was so much fish, there was some left over for fish tacos the next day!  

 I caught the biggest fish!