Bad Boyz in San Felipe, Mex 1/28-1/31
This story starts about 3 months ago when I first planned this trip. The original plan was to head down to San Quintin and get in on the great winter yellowtail bite. Things didn't go as planned and i had to cancel this trip a week before we were supposed to go. Of course, they killed the yellowtail that weekend. some boats came in with limits. I kicked myself for having canceled but whats done is done. I had to think of a way to get down there. So...I planned to head down there the next weekend...Just me and the GF. Thats when the storms hit our coast and pretty much ruined my plans again. some of the roads got washed out and some of the bridges on HWY 1 got damaged. Now What? LOL. Thats when I decided on trying San Felipe for the first time. I didnt know much about the place other than its located on the northern side of the Sea Of Cortez. I looked up some info and got a little group together. It would be three of us on this trip. Jason(Oz), Hariel(Hbomb), and myself.
Day 1
I wake up around 5am and head down to pick up Oz. As i pull up in front of Oz's, place i get a call from Hariel. He had got sick the night before and couldn't make the trip. Now its just me and Oz... We pack his things in the car and were off. It took us around 4 hours to get to the border in Calexico. We crossed over and started the drive down Hwy 5 to San Felipe.
About half way there, I get lost in the scenery and music and lose track of my speed. Oz sees something in the distance in the middle of the road. What is that? Oh @##$! Speed Trap! I slowed down but it was too late. They got me doing around 110km/hr in an 80km/hr zone. They pulled me over to the side of the road and they asked me the usual questions. Where are you going? What are you doing there? Where are you coming from?..... So were on the side of the road for about 15mins. The officer wrote me a ticket for what he said was the absolute minimum he could give me so he wouldnt ruin my vacation. It came out to $20. The officer was cool, didnt really harass us or anything. He apologized for having to write me a ticket, shook my hand an we were back on the road.
Next was the military checkpoint. We pull up and they ask to inspect the car. We step out and this guy seems pretty cool. Just doing his routine check under the seats and around the car when another one of the soldiers comes to talk to me. He starts asking me 21 questions.... For some reason he keeps staring at Oz
and then he asks
"Do you guys smoke Marijuana?"....
"um...no"...
"Yeah, I think you do"...
"no we dont smoke at all"
"Well I think you do"
He comes up to Oz and asks him to empty his pockets. I translate for him... "If you have any weed on you, you might as well pull it out now because im going to find it"..."O...k..." He gave Oz a pat down and found nothing. He stares us down and the other guy finishes his inspection and tells us we can go. We didnt feel too bad about the whole thing. These guys have a job to do and personally, im glad to see they are doing it. We werent the only car that got a thorough inspection. Every car that came through the checkpoint got checked.
We continue toward our destination... Just before the military inspection the paved road ends and detours into this dirt side road.
Its dirt road for a few miles then the paved road starts again. The dirt road was not bad at all. I had no problems driving through in my Impala doing around 40km/hr. We finally arrive to San Felipe. We drive down the "Malecon"(The touristy area in SF) and find a nice resort style hotel. I had reservations at a different hotel but we thought this one would be an upgrade. So we walk in the "El Cortez" office and work out a good deal on a nice room in a beach front hotel. Unload our gear, get some rest, and were off to find a pangero to take us out fishing the next day. We drove down to Puertecitos which is about an hour away from SF. Thats where i hard the good fishing is. So we drive around and see some boats in the area but theyre mostly shrimping boats. The ones that looked like fishing boats, nobody was around to ask any questions. We drove back to San Felipe and had a late lunch.So now me and Oz are thinking its gonna be surf fishing tomorrow. Thats when we noticed a "Pio-Pio's sportfishing" sticker. The waitress wrote the number down for us. I called the number when we got back to the hotel... So now he had a panga lined up. $80 for a half day inshore trip. Setup the meeting place in front of the "Rice and Beans" restaraunt... Thats where the launch ramp is and they keep all the pangas on the beach. We drove down to check it out...
This is when we notice how low the tide is.....WOW!. At high tide the water covers the ramp you see in the picture. So after taking a few pics were off to find a spot for dinner. Fish tacos sounded good to me.
Oz had the "mixed ceviche" which is pretty much a "campechana" on a tostada
Its back to the room for some rest, but first we setup a bunk for hariel even tho he couldnt be there.
The room...Very spacious.
Day Two
Wake up to a beautiful morning...calm seas and no wind at all. We head down to the launch ramp which is around 5 mins from the hotel.
We meet our Panguero and were ready to go. Im wondering how the heck were going to launch from the beach. "This is going to be interesting..." and it was LOL.
We ride in the back of his pickup
He pulls the boat up to the beach and we jump in with our panguero...then the truck driver pushes us into the water with his truck. No trailer needed...LOL. And were off!
We fished inshore as planned and caught some different species.
Lots of Roncadores
and mixed species
Some crazy looking eel i caught
We also got some cabrilla and bass we didnt get pics of. Most were caught and released since there wasnt much in size.
We werent expecting much from a 1/2 day inshore trip so we were not let down. The captain was cool and spoke very good English. He explained that we came at a bad time because the tides were too large, and he was right.When the tide started coming back in, We needed 8oz to hold down in 80 feet of water. When we fished a little deeper, we couldnt hold on to the bottom at all which sucked for fishing. The highlight of the day was seeing a 30# class White Sea Bass swim up to the surface to say whats up then sink down never to be seen again LOL. We threw everything in the tackle box at it and wouldnt bite. We still ended up with a mixed bag of fish and some new species. Not bad for a 1/2 day.
So we get back to the hotel, wash up, and off to dinner. There are so many places to eat in San Felipe, its so hard to choose. We make up our minds and...
So many items on the menu, why not order them all right?
So day two ends with us going back to the room and getting some more sleep.
Day Tres
I had already reserved our boat for this day(Saturday) with Dale(gonetobaja) on BD. We would be fishing out of Puertecitos. We woke up early to make the hour drive and arrived to meet our Captain "Naty" at around 6:30am. We hopped in Naty's truck and head to the launch ramp. This time we had a trailer pulling the boat. So we get to the ramp and...
It looks like we might not get out after all...The tide was waaaaay too low. We HAVE to get out, so i jump on the back of the truck and rock the boat off the trailer with my superhero strength.
It worked! and were off. Beautiful Seas again... "I hope these crazy tides dont f up our day." It took a while to get to the first Island...
The "Enchanted Islands"....i believe there are 7 of them?
We fished all of them and came up on a bunch of different species agian including a smaller grouper. The highlight was when were trolling for Maybe a WSB or something...and we get a bite... Im reeling it in. WTH is it? What? "JUREL!"(yellowtail) We fished this spot for a while and caught 7 YT total...
Got back to the ramp at high tide this time. No probs geting the boat on the trailer and off the ramp.
We get back to the hotel around 6-7pm tired as heck.... take a shower and rest for a few. Then its off to dinner again. Oz has the food pr0n on his camera and will post it when he gets a chance. as well as some more pics.
Day Cuatro
Day four we wake up around 7am...get our gear together, check out, have some chilaquiles for breakfast, do some shopping at the malecon shops, and were out of San Felipe around 9am. The drive back was uneventful. The part I hate about going to baja is having to drive back to the US. The long 2 hour wait at the border and the traffic on the 405. Now im back in the good ole USA...
Hasta la proxima.
-Vic 101
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Originally Posted by fishbones
