A NEW WAY OF GETTING SPORTFISHING INFORMATION FOR BAJA CALIFORNIA

By Gene Kira, September 15, 2003, as published in Western Outdoor News:

It ain't exactly your personal problem, of course, but the last couple of weeks have been a real "e-nightmare" for the electronic gathering of fishing information by a certain Western Outdoor News Baja fishing columnist.

It all started about three weeks ago, with the arrival of a weird email with the Subject-line of "Your details" and a strange attachment that I, of course, was waaaay too smart to open.

Cunningly, I trashed the little sucker without looking at it, and smugly sat back to continue my accustomed email routine with my loyal stable of regular Baja fishing reporters.

Roughly an hour later, though, a similar email arrived, with the Subject of "Thank you!" And then--at about fifteen-second intervals--came, "Re: That movie," "Re: Your application," and "Re: Wicked screensaver," all packing the same filthy little attachment, about 100K in size.

This, of course, was the beginning of the fantastic, 96-hour roller coaster ride many of us had with the famous Sobig internet virus/worm, about 36 hours of which I spent continuously emptying my email box, sterilizing my hard disk, and doing it all over again, when it didn't work at first.

By the time the onslaught finally faded away, I had learned to construct a virtual Great Wall of China around my modem that successfully fended off more than 5,000 email copies of Sobig, leaving me standing there, beating my chest in triumph, like King Kong up there on the Empire State Building. I had conquered the S.O.B.!

But then, the really bad stuff happened.

My website server company "upgraded" its software to something they called "ReelStupid 2.0" (not its real name) which, to make a long, bloody story short, gutted what seems to have been thousands of people's websites to varying degrees--including my website, www.bajadestinations.com, that receives my email.

Judging by the bewildered followups still coming in, I lost hundreds of Baja fishing report emails, and most critically, this evil "upgrade" wiped out my website shopping cart software, making it impossible to sell stuff. As you might well imagine, this is costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in lost book sales. (Okay, it might not be quite that much, but dammit, there's a lot of sushis and Big Macs in there.)

Ah well, as they say in the laxative commercials, "This, too, shall pass," and even now, at least my email seems to be returning to normal.

This email-Baja-fishing connection is a fascinating phenomenon to experience, especially with the recent proliferation of the bootlegged satellite systems that are now appearing in Baja's remotest locations.

You may not have really noticed it, but gradually, the fishing reports coming out of Baja today contain more and more usable, timely information--and that's 99.9 percent thanks to email.

I still remember the exact moment of the very first email I ever received from Baja. It was from Marisol Verdugo at Martin Verdugo's Beach Resort in Los Barriles, and both of us were so shocked that she "got through" we really didn't know quite what to say to each other!

Well! As Marisol would say, things have changed so quickly. Just a few years later, we are in another universe--and as Western Oudoor New's Baja Fishiing Editor it's endlessly interesting to watch how the internet brings the peninsula into sharper and sharper focus each week.

So, despite the e-disasters that block the tracks occasionally, this internet-Baja fishing thing usually runs like a freight train, and it's here for the long haul. It's a wonderful way of fostering friendships, experiencing the Sea of Cortez, and feeling the fishing seasons as they unfold, day by day.

(Related Baja California, Mexico, articles and reports may be found at Mexfish.com's main Baja California information page. See weekly fishing news, photos, and reports from the major sportfishing vacation areas of Mexico including the Baja California area in "Mexico Fishing News.")