SeaFortuna Fishing Charters

During many bare boat sailing charters down in the islands (from florida to Belize) we worked hard at fishing, usually only ending up with a few good fish per trip. Don't get me wrong, bonefish on the flats, grouper in the channels, tarpon and snapper in the mangroves are fun. But. This trip we wanted some blue water catching.

On our sailboat charters we didn't concentrate much on trolling up larger pelagic fish during deep water crossings for the obvious reason of the difficulties of working the fish; having to lower the sails and start the engines, or heaving-to with it's lack of maneuverability, lot's of work for just our four hands.

We found Seascape charters 38ft. Luhrs in online searching while looking for a bareboat charter near San Jose Del Cabo, Baja California, Mexico. Having taken many Long Range charters from San Deigo in those waters I felt confident we could find something there to pull hard on our lines. The boat operates out of La Paz, up the east shore of the peninsula on the Sea of Cortez. I had fished for 100lb+ Yellowfin tuna and marlin in that area before, but the name of SeaFortuna sold the deal.

This would be our first power boat charter, and it came with a 13ft boston whaler with a 15HP four-stroke as dingy which sounded like a great little boat for exploring and run-n-gun chasing birds or shoreline fishing in the evenings. We contacted Bob Moore and picked dates in mid January then forgot about it till the time drew closer.

After family left from the holidays, we started studying the map Bob had sent and doing online research to get our fishing gear ready. What a shock. We found too many fishing season calendars which foretold basically nothing was in season in January. Of course we also found a number of fishing reports where a few dolphin fish were caught, but mostly it was grouper and snapper season. Not really what we wanted, but what the heck, the vacation was already paid for. We left for vacation with a there-ain't-no-fish-in-La-Paz-in-January feeling, but at least they got beer.

We met Bob, looked the boat over and had a great lunch at the La Costa restaurant which is within casting range of the boat. We liked it so much we had dinner there again on our first night back. After provisioning and checkout the next morning we were under way by 11am, on an out going tide, no wind, on vacation, slow cruising out the long channel to deep water burbling along at 1200 RPM. There was cold beer in the fridge, it was a beautiful calm sunny day, we heard there were no fish to chase after, so why hurry.

An hour later, cold beer in hand we cleared Pichilingue and had nothing but glassy smooth 100ft-and-getting-deeper-by-the-minute water ahead of us on our way to Isla Partida.

Wait a minute. There's an area that isn't glassy smooth, it's sort of rippled. Hoa- theres a splash.... so we sped up a bit and headed over to find a school of small Black Skipjack working. Susan got her spinning rod and a diamond jig and we chased them around for a while... there were schools popping up all over. After a couple hours of fun, we decided we ought to cover some ground as we had 20 miles yet to go but could still see the harbor we had left that morning.

Barely an hour (and 6 miles later) we had the channel between the mailand and Isla Espiritu Santo abeam when a familiar looking slow moving V wake appeared on the starboard bow. I scrambled down to get a rod but _my rods were not put together yet so ended up grabbing one of Bob's boat rods, a heavy spinning rod rigged with about 50lb line. The lures were already unpacked so I grabbed a 6OZ surface Tady.

Susan kept an eye on the wake and approached. I cast from the bow and the rod cast a mile, so had to stop the cast short as it was overshooting the wake. I didn't have time to say "oh drat" (or something similar) about the bad cast as the line kept screaming out like the lure hadn't hit the water yet. Closing the bail let the Dorado know for sure it was hooked so it took to the air. The amount of drag took me by surprise as I hadn't even checked it in the rush to get a cast to the fish. That made for an exciting first fish in La Paz for me (Susan had already gotten her workout on the Skipjack). A few minutes later we made the decision to kill the 10-15?lber and thus, less than 12 miles from the slip we already had our meat for the week.

We also decided that there were indeed fish in La Paz in January, and it only got better.

Over the next few days we caught grouper trolling metal lures from the Whaler along the bays where we anchored at night, saw and cast to jumping Blue and Mako sharks (and the resulting loss of lures, until we rigged a rod with wire, then never saw another one) and chased lots of Skipjack schools. We found that a rod capable of reaally long casts with a small jig, retrieved at the fastest pace possible was the trick to catch both the jumping Skipjack and the cruising schools of Dorado. A number of Skipjack and Dolphin also fell to trolled feathers and cedar plugs, as well as something (big!!) that hit a cedar plug and peeled line off at a screaming rate against hard drag for a few minutes before throwing the hook... will always wonder what it was.

Susan also had lots of fun bottom fishing on the hump 8 miles NE of Isla Partida. I was busy there with larger skipjack caught using the vertical jigging method (yo-yo jigging, butterfly jigging, high speed jigging... it has many names); consisting of dropping the specially shaped jig fast, then put your head down and reel as fast as you can while pumping the rod with each turn of the high speed reel handle.... till it stops and the line starts screaming out again or you reach the surface and repeat.
Not to mention the incredible sunsets, and huge packs of Porpoise that when we drove near, would stand up to look at us (left), then turn to play all around the boat for a while (below).

We left SeaFortuna anchored a couple days in a very small cove at the north end of Isla Partida where we enjoyed watching the seals play around the boat. Hearing them blow bubbles under the boat and scratching on the anchor chain all night long was not quite as enjoyable, so we ended up opening the main cabin setee into a bed to more easily ignore the noisy neighbors. Just after midnight the sky would usually clear so the stars lit the sky. The seals cruised underwater, creating their own phosphorescent trails of stars.

Most fishing was done with the whaler. It was far more productive to run-n-gun with the dingy, and more fun to boot. I finally figured out how to catch Grouper on the fly rod by giving up on the lunkers we could see along the rocks and fishing deeper water rocks instead.

Every morning a huge school or two of Yellowtail would swim through the bay, and though i was able to get casts to them, they would only follow the jig, never taking it. Frustrating but beautiful to watch over the shallow sandy white bottom. The few times they cornered a school of bait against the walls of the canyon making a huge commotion i was unable to get there in time to cast, seeing only the aftermath of a myriad of scales floating to the bottom.

On the morning of our last full day aboard I was still hoping to catch my first Yellowtail. According to past reading, they would typically appear in late February, though some reportedly hang around all year. We were planning to anchor the last night in a one boat sized bay down on Isla Espiritu Santo, so would fish with the big boat on the way down as we had run the dingy out of fuel on prior days. Hoping to find the jumping sharks again, we headed due west from our anchorage cove, then a little north when we spotted Frigate birds working. It turned out they were on a huge meatball, which split into several meatballs of sardines being attacked by small and large skipjack not to mention the occasional Grey whale. The larger skipjack were hitting from below, so you had to let the lure sink for a 30 count before starting the retrieve if you wanted to fight the larger ones. Susan's spinning rod made them lots of fun.

After one particularly long fight, the birds and bait had moved a couple miles west, so we decided to continue south. Along the way I happened to notice a large bait ball on the bottom in 240 ft of water. We marked them on the GPS and relocated the spot to set up a drift. We both dropped jigs down and ended up catching mackerel about the size of the jigs. Hoping for that elusive yellowtail I quickly put on a big butterfly jig, 10 OZ this time. On the next retrieve from the bottom, cranking the lure madly up through 100ft or so, the jig was nailed and whatever it was started hauling line right back to the bottom. The fish was fighting different than I had experienced so far; it had a strong slower tail thump, but the fight was pretty much up and down, very little movement to the side. I knew it was something different. My suspicion was rewarded when the fish finally reached color depth and the Yellowtail's yellow tail became obvious. Two more quickly followed then the bite stopped. We wandered south staying on that 240ft depth and soon found another school of bait on the bottom and this time i observed the depth sounder long enough after we stopped over the school to see that it was surrounded by larger fish marking arch echos.

Sure enough we started picking up Yellowtail again. Interestingly the live mackerel that Susan put down was ignored but they sure liked the butterfly jigs.

On our next stop we had put lures out to troll as we were heading down, but since the wind was north we left them to trail behind the boat while we jigged. After Susan pulled in the last yellowtail before we decided we better find our night anchorage I pulled in the large swimming plug we were trolling on the starboard side. Susan reeled in the cedar plug on the port side which had sunk to near vertical. She was hit hard almost immediately. I was expecting a Yellowtail, but this fish was covering ground, pulling way harder, and had a faster tail thump.

We were both very surprised by what broke the surface at the side of the boat. It was the largest Black Skipjack i have ever seen (well over 30 inches). Unfortunately I only shot video of it forgetting to take a still shot of the fish in the hurry to get it back in the water before it became too tired to survive.

That evening we anchored in a beautiful cove, with very deep steep sides and caught lots of small skipjack casting from the boat, as well as small yellowtail. Sometime after midnight a strong southwest wind came up making it a miserable noisy last night on the boat with a rough ride back to the harbor. We drove over many more schools of bait and their shepherding yellowtails, but decided to drive on through as the idea of drifting in those seas was unappealing. The boat was amazingly dry even while taking steep short waves on the bow quarter. Susan's 30+ inch Black Skipjack ready for release (right).

We hope to be able to charter SeaFortuna again some day, and won't hesitate to go fishing during the no-fish season of December and January. Here is what we learned about the local fishing in january:

0) turn off the funny looking fish markers on the depth sounder so you can see what is really there, the cartoon fish were so large they block out the returns from large fish near the schools of bait.

1) Keep a steady watch out for surface wakes of cruising Dorado and shark.... be prepared to cast to them and approach slowly for the cast.

2) Bring a cast net to catch live bait so you can target the huge grouper that roam along the cliff walls at high tide.

3) Troll along the bay walls with metal jigs, and fish small jigs outside the bays cliffs in 50-80 ft of water for grouper.

4) Search the bottom in 150 to 300 ft of water for huge blobs of red on the depth sounder which mark schools of maceral or sardines... then vertical jig for the large skipjack and yellowtail that herd those schools. We found them all along the western shore of both islands... there was no magic spot.

5) As always look for birds marking schools of bait, though we spotted many schools of skipjack working small baitfish that the birds did not seem interested in.

6) If you do no have a good reel for vertical jigging, buy one and bring it, and be sure to have braided (non-stretch) line on it, as jigging up from 240 ft of line you will not be able to get the jig moving correctly with stretchy mono line. If you do not know what i am talking about, do a google search for vertical jigging.

7) Always have lines out trolling when you are moving around, we caught skipjack and dorado trolling everywhere.

Good luck!