Driving LosBarriles-Loreto-SanLucasCove

On 5/17, we got impatient and had Greg reverse the tractor process and pull the boat so we could move North. The plan was to go Loreto to see if the striped marlin were any closer up there, and if not, continue on to San Lucas Cove in time for the Yellowtail Shootout.

The drive to Loreto went by pretty quickly, and we stopped initially at Puerto Escondido which is a massive half-finished port project that appears to have lost all momentum and may never recover. A great ramp and facilities, but for $28US a day, we decided that we might at well go up the road to Loreto and launch at the city ramp for 0$US. This put us in the LaRivera RV park in the center of town ($10/night), where we got word from the locals that the marlin were here, but 35-40 miles offshore. Oooohh, that’s a little too far for our little boat…but we decided to give it a shot and keep an eye on the weather and the gas gauge.


Waking early early the next morning, we launched in the dark and headed out to the bait grounds as the sunrise painted a huge panorama of orange hues ahead of us. Amazingly made bait quickly (we’d heard it was tough) and pointed the bow due East to the northern tip of Isla Carmen (about 10 miles away).

As we came around the tip of the island, there was an odd looking boil about 60ft in diameter that was slowly moving around out in the open ocean. At first it looked like a tidal rip over a seamount or something like that, but as we got closer it started looking really fishy, so Steve chucked a Tady into the middle and wham-o goes the rod. After a really good fight, he finally pulls up our first tuna species, a little Skipjack football. I quickly referred to the Baja Catch to see if we should keep it to eat, but the profile contained phrases like ‘gruesome table fare’ and ‘grey meat’ so back she went into the drink.



After catching a few more, time was wasting so we continued due East in hopes that the water temp would rise. 10 more miles and the only thing that was changing was the gas gauge and the wind, so we decided that it just wasn’t going to be our day for big game. After more inshore fishing, we got back into town pretty early and decided to go ahead and pack right back up again and move to San Lucas Cove. Kind of hard to accept that there were no more unknown magical fishing spots left on the agenda, but it was comforting to know that we’d be finishing the last week of the trip at a great camp with great people, and those awesome yellowtail.