Ripping over dunes in a side-by-side, Ryan Morie clutches the grab bar and shouts over the roaring engine, “You drive these things a lot back home?”
He must have been impressed—or maybe a little concerned. I was getting at it like The Dukes of Hazzard, and as I whipped the little buggy through a series of S-turns, sand sprayed into the scrub brush along the trail.
“No!” I bark and goose the engine to climb the face of a dune. Spinning and spitting sand, the wheels bog down. The ATV slews to a stop. We are stuck—up to the axles.
Four of us pile out, and while our young content creator friends—Morie and fellow YouTube phenom Tyler Wald—film themselves “bro-ing” about our predicament, veteran adventurer and photographer Jon Whittle and I stand there and scratch our heads.
Protected from the springtime Mexican sun by Pelagic Exo-Tech hoodies and a cooler of Pacificos, it takes time and trial and error before Whittle makes the sage observation that gravity is our friend. With our well-muscled YouTubers serving as oxen and the pedal to the floor, we eventually bulldoze over scrub in a sketchy vertical path to freedom.
“What do we do now?” Wald asks, still huffing from exertion. You could tell he was looking for a certain answer. We were miles from our intended destination, the lighthouse at Punta Arena, where local intel hinted at large roosterfish cruising the beach.
“There’s only like 30 minutes of daylight left,” Morie says. He turns to look over the dunes, toward our rental house a couple miles up the beach. Then he looks down to the Sea of Cortez, where clear-green surf sloshes around an isolated cluster of boulders along an otherwise flat sand beach. “We should probably fish,” he says.
No more words were necessary. We grabbed surf rods from the rod racks on the ATV, donned waterproof Yeti backpacks full of tackle and hoofed down to the beach. Armed with poppers and a two-piece, 10-foot, medium-heavy Penn Carnage III rod, we had roosterfish to chase.
This was the evening of our first full day on the East Cape of Mexico’s Baja California Sur. Lesser men might have had their fill of fishing after a full day offshore, but Wald hit the nail on the head when he said, “I mean, when’s the next time you think you’ll be fishing in Mexico?” We had three days and a mission to wring out every last cast.
Not Really Cabo
Flying in and out of Cabo San Lucas was about all we saw of the bustling resort town with its crowds, nightlife and famously craggy beaches. Our destination was quieter, an hour or so north by van near a town called La Ribera. This is the East Cape, on the Gulf of California between La Paz to the north and Los Cabos to the south.
A new luxury development, Costa Palmas, is turning this little desert town into an upscale destination. “You get the small-town feel with luxury amenities at your disposal,” says Aaron Kenna, owner of the Onda Estate property where we stayed. “We have everything from local taco shops to five-star Michelin restaurants.”
Indeed, on our morning ATV rides to meet the boat at nearby Costa Palmas Marina, a head nod from the gate man transitioned us from stray dogs gnawing roadkill along a pitted dirt road to the cobblestone paths and lush landscaping of a Four Seasons resort. The dichotomy of the area is intense, but not uncomfortable.
Feed the Village
The first order of business was to obtain rations, which meant tuna. Onda actually provided all the food and drink we needed—and an excellent Spanish-speaking cook we called “Chef”—but when yellowfin tuna are available, you take them.
Powered by triple Yamaha 425 XTOs, Capt. Bryan Mackliz’s 42-foot Yellowfin made comfortable work of the short run out past the 1,000-meter contour. In 3,000-foot depths less than 10 miles from shore, we began our search for the telltale signs of life amid the blue offshore waters of the Sea of Cortez.
From the dock to tuna, it took about an hour. Along the way we spotted free-jumping striped marlin, a whale shark, and a silly sleeping sea lion bobbing about a dozen miles offshore with one flipper in the air. “Pajaro!” points deckhand Yon Gilberto Romero, which means bird, frigates in this instance. Things were about to get interesting, and it wasn’t long before Mackliz throttled down among hundreds of porpoises spinning, cartwheeling and frolicking in an immense bait drive.
“Atun! Atun! Atun!” he shouts from the tower’s second station. “Cast! Cast!”
Three of us scampered to the bow and fired poppers in front of the dolphins. No one hooked up, and the action passed in a moment. Then we were on the chase as Mackliz wheeled the boat and ran, leapfrogging to stay in front of the rumpus. We launched casts whenever the boat slipped into idle.
Almost every cast ended in a blow-up as five or six fish raced to the lure. Most times, the fish didn’t give you time to work the lure. Doubles, triples, quadruples—everyone was hooked up and dancing around each other, including the flat-lined live baits forgotten and bucking in the rod holders. Setting the tone with mariachi shouts, Romero and mate Esteban Mackliz raced to gaff and box fish amid the belly laughing of gringos and the staccato slap of frenzied tuna tails on a bloody deck.
Hours passed in minutes, and just as I was beginning to wonder how many 15- to 25-pound yellowfins they were going to let us keep, the captain pulled off the bite. On the lid of the transom baitwell, Esteban deftly skinned and separated the loins off a tuna. He served up sashimi with a glug of soy and a squeeze of lime right on the recently swimming carcass. No tuna ever tasted so good, and we had a lot of it, enough for us and for the crew’s families and friends.
Read Next: Catching Roosterfish in Baja, Mexico
El Gallo
Roosterfish were a primary target of the expedition, and we found them thick on day three by cruising north aboard the Yellowfin to a place called Punta Pescadaro (Fishmonger Point).
“Kikiriki! Kikiriki!” Romero exclaims in a high-pitched rhythm. Again and again, he shouts it every time we hook up, hollering “Gallo! Gallo! Gallo!” and pointing emphatically when a rooster comb breaks the surface in hot pursuit of the hundreds of live sardinas he’s been side-arming off the stern all morning.
Roosters don’t say cock-a-doodle-doo in Spanish, they say kikiriki, and it took Romero several tries and plenty of gesticulating to explain this. He knows about as much English as I do Spanish, and we were slapping each other’s shoulders and laughing by the end of the conversation.
Just off the beach, the scene was a beautiful massacre. Animated by scudding cloud shadows, the rolling peaks of the Sierra de las Cacachilas loomed arid and brown over bright-blue shallows. Between mountains and sea, private-airstrip opulence flowered in the desert in bursts of brightly colored villas arrayed along the shore.
A flotilla of white and yellow pangas, maybe a couple dozen, were posted up on a stretch of rocky bottom, and the party was already raging when Mackliz eased his big Yellowfin in among them.
The density of life was astounding. Guides in every panga chucked sardinas by the scoop, and those little fish reorganized into frightened groups in the shade of the boats. Roosters, snapper, grouper and who knows what else hammered them from below while frigates and gulls dived from above in repeated aerial assaults.
In the bow and stern of each panga, fly-fishermen flailed away with determination, using a rapid two-hand retrieve to draw reaction strikes. If you want to catch a roosterfish on fly, this is a good place to do it, but live bait is much easier. You could see disdain on some faces as we battled one fish after the next from our big boat.
We caught enough roosters on free-lined sardinas that Morie and Wald started experimenting. Fish would follow a popper all the way to the boat without hitting it, so they started using the plug as a teaser and pitched baits only when they spotted larger fish. Then they started testing different artificials. You know it’s been a good morning when anglers look for ways to make the fishing more difficult.
Over three days, we spent daybreaks and evenings running the beach in ATVs in search of active feeding. Each morning after breakfast, we boarded the boat bound for more roosters or offshore. We ate, slept and fished right up until the morning of our departure, which found Wald down on the beach in front of the house squeezing in a few last casts.
A Side Dish of Stripers
You didn’t think we were going all the way to the Sea of Cortez without sampling its famous striped marlin fishery, did you?
You could tell Mackliz and the crew were aching to troll, even while we were having so much fun catching other species like tuna and roosters. For some fishermen, riding around in a boat all day chasing one shot at glory just isn’t as exciting as actively casting to fish.
Boy, that’s a bad attitude. “You should come back in summer when the bite is really on,” Esteban tells me in perfect English as I experience the fatigued glow of post-marlin euphoria. Over just a few hours, we went four for five on stripers and missed a big wahoo, and Mackliz is claiming it gets better?
“Yeah,” he says. “In summer, we also get blue marlin and sailfish and lots of dorado.”
Where to Stay: Onda Estate
All-inclusive resorts are one thing; Onda Estate (ondacabo.com) is something different. Decadently luxurious, it’s a gorgeous beach villa with a pool and hot tub that sets up perfectly for three families with kids or a handful of hardcore fishing buddies. For a flat rate, Onda takes care of everything, including the boat and crew, transportation, ATV rental, and delicious and authentic Mexican meals made with your catch. You don’t need to ask Cesar, the butler, for anything. He anticipates your needs, whether it’s a cup of coffee, laundry service, a snack, or a top-shelf tequila drink by the pool.
There are numerous vacation rentals along the East Cape, as well as large and boutique resorts. Charter operations are easy to find, and we even saw anglers on the beach with surf guides. But before you book anything, check out Onda. From facilities to staff, everything about it is top-notch.
