NO WHITE SEABASS BUT PLENTY OF FISH FOR THE ICE CHEST

Dec. 14, 2004, Darrell "Smitty" Smith,, San Quintin, Baja sportfishing, Mexico:

We just returned from fishing at San Quintin. The following was written and photos taken by Alex Smith of King Harbor Yacht Club Fishing Fleet:

"Alex and Darrell "Smitty" Smith, Craig Barnes, and Keith Williams, coming from King Harbor Yacht Club, Redondo Beach, Calif., Dec 12 and 13 had 2 days fishing out of the Old Mill in San Quintin, Mexico in search of white seabass.

"Pedro's Pangas provided the large inboard panga and skipper Hector. We didn't find the elusive white seabass, but filled up on bottom fish. Smitty caught a 6 pound lingcod. Keith fought a bonito for 10 minutes until a sea lion intercepted his catch. We all caught two days of limits on rockcod and a variety of others.

"Fishing on Monday, we had great conditions for December with flat seas and almost balmy temperatures.

"On Tuesday San Quintin fishing weather snapped into bitter and frosty winds, but it didn't deter us from loading the cooler with great table fare."

The boat name was Romy, a big panga with inboard diesel. We fished at Socorro the first day, looking for White Seabass and by midday we had only caught Sand Bass, Barracuda, a few lings then gave up and moved out to deeper water for limits of reds.

On Tuesday we ran north of San Quintin to fish at Ben's Rock near San Martin Island, and I believe the 15 fathom spot looking for White Seabass again but gave up. We moved out to deeper rock piles about 300-400 feet and loaded again on reds and a couple nice Lings.

Both days we scratched at bait getting only a few macks so we used frozen squid tipped jigs. I blame the lack of white Seabass on the huge numbers of anchovies that were in the shallower areas that we targeted the White Seabass. Most of our fish were caught on white or blue and white jigs yo-yoed off the bottom. Limits of rock cod both days.

(As reported by Gene Kira, Mexico Reports Editor of Western Outdoor News, the largest U.S. outdoor weekly newspaper. See "Mexico Fishing News" online for current fishing reports, photos, weather, and water temperatures from San Quintin and other major Mexican sportfishing areas. Vacation travel articles, fishing maps and seasonal calendars, and fishing related information for San Quintin may be found at Mexfish.com's main San Quintin page.