The Middle-aged Man and the Sea

by Turk Pipkin

(This story originally ran in Texas Monthly, September, 1995 under the title "The Reel World")

I am not a good fisherman. Left to my own devices, I have the unfortunate habit of putting myself in new and unknown situations where I am more likely than not to screw up royally. While surf-casting on a recent trip to Baja, Mexico, a large fish which I was not destined to identify pulled me waist-deep into the ocean where I was pounded in the chest and shoulders by a massive wave that nearly washed me away to sea. I do not know whether it is best said that the fish escaped me, or I the fish, but in any event we both returned to our respective environments with increased mutual respect (and with a lot of sand in my shorts).

Because I am not a good fisherman, I have found that it is imperative to go where the fishing is good. And the place I am most likely to catch fish is in the Sea of Cortez, the 500-mile long body of water that separates the Baja peninsula from the Mexican mainland. Lined with long sandy beaches and secluded coves and bays, the cold, nutrient-laden currents of the Cortez surge upward from submerged canyons and photosenthesize in the warm surface waters to create rich blooms of plankton. These uplift zones form the bottom end of a vast food chain that includes cabrilla, yellowtail, dorado, sierra mackerel, yellowfin tuna and many others. In the warm months, marlin and wahoo steam through the deep channels consuming everything in sight, while giant squid weighing 40-pounds are sometimes so avaricious as to strike trolled marlin lures.

My own love affair with the Sea of Cortez began a decade ago when I drove the entire length of the beautiful Baja Peninsula—about 2200 miles round-trip from Los Angeles to Cabo San Lucas—along the way exploring and fishing deserted beaches and small fishing villages. Most memorable was the town of Santa Rosalia where I had heard that large yellowtail could sometimes be caught from the shore as they pursue schools of sardines. Other fishermen were certain that yellotail populations had been decimated by commercial fishing but I could not afford a boat or a guide and figured it was at least worth checking out. Coming into town after a long day on the road, I slowed as the highway swooped down from the mountains to the beach where a group of Mexican men and boys began waving their arms at me. “This is it!” they yelled in English and Spanish.

I parked and began to rig up my rod while the others began casting with coke bottles wrapped in line, holding the base of a bottle and slinging the coiled line from the neck. Just before dark we saw the first fish break the water and were soon inundated by sizable yellowtail. In fifteen minutes we landed a dozen fish of about 20 pounds. After celebrating our good fortune with warm cerveza the others bid me buenas noches and walked back into town. I drove farther up the beach, parked ten feet from the high tide line, built a fire of driftwood and cooked my catch which tasted like the nectar of Poseidon.

That night, beneath stars more brilliant than I have ever seen before or since, I sipped tequila from the bottle while bottom-fishing the inky-black depths with a piece of the yellowtail as bait. In the middle of the night, I awoke with a start from a deep tequila-induced dream of mermaids jumping from the sea into my arms. Grabbing my rod and reel which was singing like a jail break, I fought long and hard against some unknown giant which I finally dragged onto shore where my flashlight illuminated an ugly, spotted, goggle-eyed, horned sea monster of the deep. Looking deep into my eyes the fish began to talk to me in guttural tones which sounded a like, “Put me back, pendéjo! Put me back!”

Stumbling backwards in surprise (and almost falling into the fire) I pulled out my knife, cut the line and helped the talking fish back into the water where, with one final insult, it disappeared below the surface. It was weeks later when I learned that this was a cabazon (scopanicthus marmoratus), whose sounds are the result of the differences between the water pressure in its home and the air pressure in mine. Despite this explanation, I touched not another drop of tequila for quite some time.

Having recently heard of phenomenal tuna fishing at Espiritu Island, near the gracious colonial port city of La Paza, I called local sportfishing operator Bob Butler who has a devoted clientele of repeat customers. Butler informed me that it was still a little early in the year for the tuna, but they were catching yellowtail, dorado, pargo and bonita. I may not be a good fisherman but when a guy tells me the fish are biting, I can usually tell when he is shucking me and when he is not. It did not take me long to get on a flight to Cabo San Lucas, where I rented a car for the two-hour drive up the coast to La Paz, a spectacular road that winds from deep forested canyons to desert plateaus with occasional long vistas of the sea.

At six a.m. the next morning, I met Butler’s van in front of the bayfront Los Arcos Hotel for the ride to Bahia de los Muertos, the Bay of the Dead. Contrary to its name, this rich inlet of water has substantial marine life including trumpet fish (the general size and shape of an arrow, with fins instead of feathers) and a healthy population of manta rays that in an effort to shake sucker fish from the underside of their wings fly completely out of the water and perform spectacular aerial acrobatics. There is also a sandy beach dotted by the ramshackle trailers and faded tents of American and Mexican vagabonds who stay here for months at a time because it is both beautiful and free.

Hopping aboard a waiting panga with a boatman or panguero named Gildardo Lucero, we cruised slowly along the shallow edge of the bay searching for schools of sardines to use as bait. Scrambling to the bow of the open skiff, Gildardo unfurled his casting net, holding the free line in his teeth till a school of sardines raced by. In a flash of the eye the net was airborne, opening wide in mid-flight and landing perfectly level on the water in a twelve foot circle. A pause, then Gildardo stamped his feet quickly on the bottom of the boat, scaring the sardines almost magically up into the closing net.

Gildardo Lucero is a good fisherman. The son of a son of a son of a sailor, as the saying goes, Gildardo was raised on or near these waters. He may or may not know much about the rest of the world but about his part of it, he knows much indeed. Trolling the live sardines in thirty feet of water, we soon began to catch what would in turn be our next bait—speedy torpedo-like bonita weighing three to five pounds. While I played a muscular mackerel on my light-weight spinning gear, Gildardo hooked one on a hand-line and nonchalantly pulled it in. Fishing hand-lines in these waters is the common method for many of the locals and I know another La Paz boatman who once hooked a 500-pound blue marlin in this manner and battled it for five hours, running out of gas and wearing out two pairs of gloves and one pair of hands before bringing the big blue alongside.

When we had a couple of fat mackerel aboard, Gildardo pulled out two heavy-duty 5-foot “Ugly Stick” rods with Penn Senator 6/0 reels. In a careful blur of fingers and line, he tied on hooks with his own variation of a double clinch knot that looked strong enough to catch a sea monster. Knowing that a good fisherman is no better than the knots he ties, I asked Gildardo to teach me this one. It took me several tries to remember which loop to hold in my mouth while twisting and threading the line, but I soon felt that I had mastered the moves, though Gildardo did not trust my version to hold the big pargo we were seeking.

An over-sized cousin of the more famous red snapper (and every bit as tasty) I had already been warned that catching pargo is like hooking onto Amtrak. In actuality it turned out to be more like hooking onto Amtrak as you pass by on a freight train going the other direction. When a pargo takes the bait and begins to run, the idea is to wait for a count of three, then throw the bale on the reel shut and yank the rod high above your head, all at the same instant that the boatman guns the motor and heads for open water. This crucial bit of timing allows the pargo to take the whole bait before the hook is set and the fish is then hopefully hauled away from its cave before it can cut the 80-pound test line on the rocks. Requiring both timing and luck, it’s a little like a Hail Mary pass, and I was amazed on my first strike when I found myself holding on for dear life as a powerful pargo tried to pull the rod from my hands, my arms from my shoulders, and my body from the boat.

For five full minutes I could do nothing but hold onto the rod. Fishing without the special chairs or fighting belts often used to give man the edge over fish, there was no resort but to stick the butt of the rod in my gut, and grunt and groan for a wonderful battle that lasted about fifteen minutes longer than my muscles desired. When we finally boated the big fish—avoiding the sharp canine-like incisors from which it draws its English name, dogfish—Gildardo estimated it would weigh sixty pounds. A short time later my fishing partner hooked into a thick-bodied leopard grouper, and we both caught more big pargo until our muscles throbbed and hands ached, and then we called, “No mas!”

A good fisherman should have tough hands, and back in La Paz as Bob Butler held out one of his oversized, leathered and lined mitts in congratulations, I realized that he may be one of the best. A good fisherman also tells wonderful fish stories, some of which are even true. “A few years ago,” Butler told me, “When I sunk a home-made gaff into a big tuna that I was trying to boat, the iron head of the gaff broke off and the tuna got away. A month and a half later, the same skipper was out fishing and caught a big, healthy tuna with the gaff still stuck in its head.” Considering how many thousands of tuna there are in the Sea of Cortez, it was a remarkable coincidence. Or was it just a remarkable story? Either way is okay by me.

You do not have to be a good fisherman to love the stories of the ocean or to worry whether the creatures who swim in it can survive the onslaught of man’s need and greed. As in many of the world’s oceans, commerical fishing has already severely depleted the waters of the Cortez. Mexico recently outlawed huge factory-fishing ships from the Sea of Cortez, but local commercial fisherman continue to clog underwater reefs with thousands of nets and may destroy both sport fishing and their own livelihoods. An Oregon-based organization called Sea Watch is leading the fight to save this fishery, though in the long run, as revenues from tourism become greater than the diminishing commercial fishing income, sportfishing and diving may be the true salvation of local fish populations. With tough new regulations on catch size, the abundance of plankton combined with the lack of pollution in these waters could result in a rapid rebound of fish populations. In the meantime I am determined to fish often and release as many fish as possible. You do not have to be a good fisherman to know that back home the working days of deadlines and commitments grow longer and longer, while the days remaining to cast gossamer line over calmed waters grow ever shorter with each passing season.

On my recent trip, I also found fine fishing halfway between Los Cabos and La Paz at the tiny town of Buena Vista where four peaceful hotels operate their own fleets of fishing boats. I checked into the Hotel Rancho Buena just before sunset and within minutes was waist deep in the gently lapping waves of the Sea of Cortez. As the other guests swapped fish stories just steps away in the hotel’s bar, I was excitedly casting to a large roosterfish or pez gallo whose amazing cockscomb-shaped dorsal fin swirled furiously in the water almost within reach of my rod, as the fish ignored every lure in my possession. If I’d been equipped with a fly rod or a big red “Atom G” surface plug, I might have been in for the fight of my fishing life, but I am not that smart or that good of a fisherman. Instead I continued to flail the water with silver spoons and golden minnows while the sky and water turned as one from pink to red, then faded through the entire spectrum to a peaceful bluish-black blanket of night, the moon overhead dancing in multiple reflections in the many faceted waves caressing my waist.

I have noticed that good fishermen have big appetites, and after changing into dry clothes I was soon giving it my best on Buena Vista’s giant family-style dinner of scallop ceviche, cole slaw, clams, sautéed shrimp, dorado in mojo de ajo, steak, refritos, rice, tortillas, and flan, a delectable feast that disappeared down my gullet in such copious quantities that my fellow diners were all sipping coffee and staring in amazement as I continued to shovel it down.

It is said that the gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men’s lives the hours spent fishing, which may explain why so many good fishermen live to a ripe, old age. Unfortunately the gods are not so forgiving with time spent partying, and though my dining companions that night were members of a group known as the Sky-diving Elvises (made famous in the movie “Honeymoon in Vegas” for their group night-time skydiving in lighted Elvis costumes), I felt obliged to decline their invitation for an all-nighter in a raucous Mexican bar. Painfully gained previous experience has demonstrated that I rarely catch fish when barfing over the side of the boat.

The next morning it is a long boat ride from Buena Vista to the fishing action, but worth every minute of it. All morning we troll large skirted plugs, my heart pounding each time as a three-foot long dorado races across the water in a blinding flash and strikes one of our lures. With my fishing partner battling the first fish, our Captain stops the boat while I bait my 12-pound test ultra-light gear with a live sardine and wait for another of the big green and blue dorado streaking beneath the boat to take the bait. When the action is fast, it is furious. Keeping the first dorado on the line and in the water near the boat attracts other dorado to the fray, and I could catch twice as many fish if I were gaffing and boating them. I am determined, howev er, to release them so we spend a lot of time reaching over the side working to remove hooks without getting finned or hooked ourselves. Taken out of the water, the dorado’s rainbow of brilliant blues, greens and yellows quickly fades to a dull silver and yellow. Once you have seen this sad change occur, it is easy to let them go.

A gaff-happy crew is the biggest barrier to a successful day of catch-and-release fishing. Fisherman who bring lots of fish back to the dock tend to tip better than those that get skunked, which to many guides seems somehow akin to fishermen who release their fish. One simple way to act like a good fisherman is to make certain when booking the boat that both fisherman and guide know what the other expects.

The dorado’s appetites slow considerably at mid-day and I am nearly asleep when our Captain steers towards some action on the horizon. Soon we are in the middle of one of the sea’s most astonishing sights. On all sides, stretching halfway to the blue horizon, we are surrounded by an incredible school of dolphins arcing in and out of the water as they chase along with a school of tuna.

My heart skips a beat as I realize that I am amidst not just a few, or a few dozen dolphin, but among many thousand of these beautiful six-foot long mammals. In mass they race forward, surfacing for air and diving back into the water where their bodies give them speed. Almost in the manner of whales, some of them jump straight out of the water, six or eight feet in the air, spinning around like a corkscrew as they survey the horizon. Fifty feet to one side several baby dolphins just two feet long put on a display in miniature of their own aerial acrobatics. Perhaps to show them up, an adult comes racing from the deep and blasts into the air, arcing fifteen feet above the water like the trained dolphins at the local marine park. But there is one important difference: these animals are free.

Hoping to get ahead of the dolphin pack and possibly catch a tuna ourselves, we race along in the boat while the spectacle continues far and wide. I am about to cry from the sheer pleasure of it all when my reel screams as a fish grabs the bait and tries to escape both the drag of my line and the mouths of the hungry dolphin.

“Tuna!” cries the captain excitedly as he shuts down the engine, but it turns out to be yet another dorado. We stop to bring in and release the fish. Around us the dolphin lay almost still. The tuna have either outrun us all or headed for the deep.

Slowly the dolphin drift away, renewing their circuitous journey of the Sea of Cortez. We wait a while, but the tuna do not reappear. It has been seven hours of hard fishing, and both the captain and my fishing partner vote to call it a day. Reluctantly I reel in my line. I do not want to stop fishing. I do not ever want to stop.

Rancho Buena Vista’s number is 800-258-8200