SEA OF CORTEZ, WHERE'S WALTER?

[vseasport]

This week my life long friend Gary Street of Laguna Hills arrived to participate in the La Paz Gold Cup black and blue marlin tournament. For the last few weeks marlin fishing on the East Cape has been very slow so I was hopeful we would find more action up north. This tournament is always loads of fun. It is a two day event with a 200 pound minimum limit for the blues and blacks. The coordinators have thrown a nice curve ball into this event. That is a $50 per pound penalty for bringing in a short fish. A 10 pound judgement error could cost a contestant $500.

We headed Jen Wren III up the Golden Sea of Cortez a couple days early to check out the fishing grounds of the tournament. Starting at the South end of Cerralvo we trolled hookless teasers past Las Cruces around La Reina by Punta Coyote and along the western side of Espiritu Santo. As the day got late we anchored for the evening in a beautiful cove at Isla de Partida. During the day we had raised sailfish, striped marlin and dorado on our teasers and were able to land one of each switching them to live bait. We had also seen loads of nice sized skip jack almost everywhere we went. What we had not seen were any blue or black marlin.

The following morning we woke up to a pretty swift southern breeze and took our time getting under way. We continued to troll north past Los Islotes and out to the famous El Bajo. There we also found loads more skip jack along with stripers sails and dorado. No big marlin but with all the bait and beautiful blue water we were still optimistic a big fish was in our future. We cut the day a little short and headed to La Paz to fuel, get checked into a slip and register for the tournament.

It wasn't until the morning we made the decision to head back out to El Bajo. Upon arrival we were able to catch four big skippys in about 5 minutes. We trolled 3 on the surface and one in our down rigger. With the previous couple days experience it was obvious the big fish were not interested in marlin lures. I hoped that trolling live baits would key them off. At the end of the day we had not raised a fish. Only two qualifying blue marlin were brought to the scale for the 79 teams fishing. One fish weighed 260 pounds and the other 202.

Day two our strategy changed. It was obvious fishing was pathetic and there were not many fish in the area. With that we could cover much more area with lures so that is what we went to. We also changed areas and headed for the southern end of Cerralvo Island. Again we didn't have a smell all day. It turned out only one fish was weighed in at 203 pounds.

When tournament control called lines out at 5PM we were much closer to Buena Vista then La Paz and just headed for home. After running for 15 minutes we found a huge school of spotted dolphin with tuna in a feeding frenzy. It was a sight I dream about. The fish going ballistic and not another boat in sight. It didn't take long to land limits of yellowfin before pointing the boat south and heading home.

La Renia is a tiny rock just big enough for a light house and a few sea lions. It sticks out of the water a couple of miles north of Cerralvo island. It normally is an outstanding fishing spot and also offers great scuba diving

We saw this ferry heading for Topolabampo coming out of the La Paz channel

Gary gets a sail to switch from a teaser

It is unbelievable how much bait is around

Snail races on anchor a Partida. The one on the left was mine. The others didn't know it had a huge hermit crab inside. I thought for sure it would be faster then a snail. It was another failed strategy for me

Our races were interuped when Diego hung a huge cabria

Loaded for Walter and ready to rumble with a rack of Accurate 50's

La Paz Municipal Pier was tournament headquarters

Shot gun start 7AM

Marlin may not have cooperated but the East Cape tuna sure did.

I wanted to know what the tuna were feeding on. We checked a couple stomachs and to my surpise only found some tiny trigger fish and small peices of little squids.

Mark Rayor

www.thejenwren.com

www.vistaseasport.com

markrayor.blogspot.com

[mariam]

Great read and great pics to go along with it.