As many of you know, my wife Eileen and I have hosted several trips, taking groups fishing in destinations in Belize and along the southern Baja Peninsula of Mexico. We suspended these trips due to COVID and have really missed the travel. I decided that the two of us should take a trip of our own and we picked one of our favorite places, Loreto.
Loreto is the easiest to get to, as it has an airport with regular flights from Los Angeles. Once again we stayed at La Mision Hotel, which is walking distance from the downtown area, which has many great restaurants and shops.

We traveled in March this year to take advantage of the appearance of the whales that visit the Pacific side of the Baja. Rather than book an excursion we rented a car and drove to Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos. There were several services here and we were able to get a skipper to take just the two of us out for an hour. Although there were high winds we were inside an inlet, and it was a short run out to where we could find the whales. Our skipper really knew what he was doing and positioned us very close to a large female grey whale and her calf. We were able to follow at a distance and get lots of good photos. We also encountered a small pod of dolphins while in the bay.

The next day we wanted to just explore the area north of Loreto. I had a spinning rod along and thought I might find a likely spot to make a few casts on the way. I spotted a sign that had a fishing icon on it and we thought it would be worth a look. It turns out that the drive to San Nicholas was over 17 kilometers and on a road that was not what it appeared to be on the map. Although marked as Route 1 it was a rough dirt road, often crossed by dry washes. When we finally arrived at San Nicholas, it was a few fishing shacks and a dozen boats pulled up on the shore that didn’t look like most had been on the water recently. We also noticed that we were missing a hub cap. We did pass a couple of vehicles while driving in, and we think one of them found it and placed it where we could see it on our way out. If the rental agency would have seen where we took their car they would have demanded the car back then and there!

We continued to explore further north and found several very beautiful bays on sandy spits that were lined with RVs and campers. We could see why so many people were spending time here. The bays were protected from the high winds on the sea and not too far from the town of Meluge. There were several restaurants and stores, situated on a large freshwater inlet, with a scenic lighthouse at the mouth.

Then we drove the road that followed the bay from Loreto as far as it would go, which turned out to be about eight kilometers. We stopped at a couple of turn outs and while I made fruitless casts with my spinning rod, Eileen gathered a huge variety of shells on the beach.

The following day we still had the car, so we made a 30 kilometer drive into the mountains to Mision San Francisco Javier de Vigge Biomundo, which was established in 1699. The cathedral is spectacular, and I can see why this is on the list to visit by most people who travel to Loreto.

On Thursday of last week, the seas had calmed enough to allow for a day of fishing. We met Sara from Land and Sea Eco Tours at the marina early that morning where she handed us our fishing licenses and introduced us to our captain, Tony. On the way to the fishing grounds, we passed a small blue whale and not long after joined a large group of boats that were all fishing live bait, with no weight. I was soon into a big yellowtail that fought like crazy, taking several powerful runs before coming to the gaff. We fished here a while longer, but the bite had died off, and Tony said he wanted to try a spot where the bottom was different.

We ran another 15 minutes to an area off the northern tip of Carmen Island. We took a couple of brief breaks to photograph a large pod of dolphins that came to play around the boat. Tony stopped the boat and rerigged our rods. He put 8-10 ounce weights on the line, add about 15 feet of 40-pound leader and a two-hook set up. We let these lines out a good distance, set the rods in the holders and trolled. We were all by ourselves, but with 32 years of experience as a guide out of Loreto, Tony knew the water well.

In the next two hours we landed five more big yellowtail. They would take the bait and rip off yards and yards of line, making the reels scream! We had to put the muscle to them as we were over a rocky bottom and if you didn’t get them up quickly you’d lose them to a broken line.

When we got back to the marina and talked to the other boats that had come in we learned that Tony had out-fished everyone. One boat had three fish, others had just one, and we had six big yellowtail on ice. This week’s photo is of me with one of our catch.

We rode in the boat on the trailer back to the area where Land and Sea Eco Tours store their boats and filleted the catches. Talking to Rick, who works for the service, he said Tony lived in an area where there were many very poor families, and when we said we would give Tony all of our fish for the village he was thrilled. Six big yellowtail would go a long way to feed these people.

We spent our last day in Loreto just enjoying the sights. We had so many great meals and experiences in town it was difficult to leave, but it’s good to be back home.