I took Jacques Fournier fishing on our 23’ Wellcraft “Murphy Girl” on Saturday. It Jacques’ first time fishing ever. We launched from Safe Marina a little past 7 am to find glassy seas as far as the eye could see. A rare day indeed with bright sun and nary a cloud to be seen. The seas were so flat, that at times it was hard to distinguish the horizon or gage distance. The sea and sky became one and resulted in sensational optical illusions. Boats in the distance appeared to be floating in space, or a silhouette from a flock of seagulls close to the boat looked like a fleet of boats out in the distance. An endless mirrored landscape of sky blue.We heard reports of leopard grouper and pintos caught the day before at the deeper reefs. I decided to try it there, but first we needed to catch bait. Sardines and mackerel can usually be found in 110’ of water at 13 to 16 miles from shore, but for some reason they have been hard to find this year. Luck was with us as we found what appeared to be a vast school of sardines at about 30 to 40 feet below the surface. We caught them on 6 hook sabiki rigs, from 1 to 5 at a time. It didn’t matter where the boat drifted, the sardines seemed to follow us. Pretty soon our 3 gallon bucket was full of 8” to 10” sardines. We bagged up 30 to keep on ice for later.
On the way out to the bait reefs, we encountered a pod of a couple hundred dolphins chasing sardines. We slowed the boat so the dolphins could surf our wakes and ride the pressure wave at the bow. Dolphins always seem to be happy and having fun, and they really put on a good show. After a while we stopped the boat and the dolphins stopped too. They just swam in circles next to the boat as if to tell us that they were ready to play some more.
At 9:30 am we were done catching bait and started south to the 40 Mile Reef. Jacque drove the boat while I rigged up the lines and baits. Before long we were at the mark and ready to fish. There were 2 boats about a mile away to the east, otherwise it appeared that we had the whole sea to ourselves. There was no wind at all. The boat drifted slowly from N to S in the morning and switched directions after the 2:30 pm high tide. For a half hour on each side of the high tide, the boat didn’t move at all. At 2 pm it started to get hot and we stopped fishing to clean the fish and put them on ice. At that time we had already caught 6 white sea bass from about 20 to 40 pounds, a 20 pound leopard grouper, and 4 goldspot bass. We started fishing again at about 3 pm and quickly caught 2 more white sea bass and 3 more leopard grouper before calling it a day at 3:30 pm. Two of the white sea bass were huge. Definitely some of the largest I have ever seen. We also had 3 big fish breakoffs that might have been caused by grouper that got caught up in the rocks.
A huge sea turtle surfaced near the boat twice for air. A rare sight. It was a truly spectacular day on the Sea of Cortez. We hope to be fishing again in 4 weeks and already have 30 sardines in the freezer just in case we can’t find bait. The white sea bass typically start showing up in January each year and are gone by June. We still have plenty of time for more epic days like this one.
Shawno
Last edited:
