A recent trip to Maui reminded my wife and me of the culinary delights of fresh, ocean-caught fish. My close friend Captain Mike Duffy passed away last year, so we no longer have his wonderful same-day fish from waters in all directions out of the harbor at Pillar Point. Before I moved to the Sierra foothills and met Mike, I fished the Pacific from Bodega Bay as far south as Monterey, and fresh fish was regular fare in our home. It was Mike who helped me with several articles on the proper care and storage of ocean-caught fish. He had owned a commercial fishing boat, restaurant, and smokehouse at times during his adventurous career.
While in Maui, I sat on our veranda many mornings, mesmerized by a calm tropical sea and the view of pillowing clouds on a not-too-distant Molokai, working on revising several chapters in my book, Chasing Rainbows: Tales of a Well-Traveled Fly Fisherman. One is about a bucket-list fantasy trip that I and three fellow angler-travelers from Northern California took in 1989 to Baja California and the Sea of Cortez.
Using two four-wheel-drive pickups, we towed boats south as far as Mulege for two weeks of beach camping and fishing. Much of the preparation for the trip involved meal planning and the logistics of food procurement and transportation. We envisioned using dry ice to chill steaks and pork cuts for meals early in the trip and would use fresh-caught fish for the rest of our main entrees, hoping to supplement these with lobster and shrimp and visits to local hielos for ice and beer and mercados for fruit, vegetables, and whatever. We also had heard from other travelers that Taster’s Choice instant coffee was a much desired barter item. Apparently it had status-symbol value when friends or neighbors were invited over to your casita to share a meal and was welcomed in lieu of cash.
Our plan was conceived on earlier trips to Baja, when we hired guides and fished from motorized pangas. But we were on our own this trip, and there was a huge learning curve. We were filled with trepidation, there being no Mexican Coast Guard presence where we were going. Our first destination was San Lucas Cove, south of Santa Rosalia, but Bahia de Los Angeles on the Sea of Cortez was our first camping stop, nearly a day’s drive south of the border, if you count down time waiting in a gas line. Arriving late, we opted to rent an unfurnished casita for two nights. In those days, everything in Baja was very inexpensive. It wasn’t Airbnb luxury, but it was a roof over our heads and meant that we didn’t have to set up camp for a short stay. Our beds were sleeping pads on a dusty concrete floor that we swept out and then checked for scorpions. There was also the added benefit of some degree of security in that there was a fenced compound with a place to park the trucks and boats and guarded by an ornery donkey.
We had only heard of these places, and there were information gaps in the few guidebooks that we could find. Roads were narrower and much worse than they are today. There were questions regarding gasoline availability, finding commodities, and security.
Our steaks went the first night. We caught a few fish the next day in our first sea trial, and they went into ceviche. Our second boat had a custom-built filleting tray on board. Pargo and cabrilla ceviche, soda crackers, limes, and beer were all we needed for lunch. It was so delicious that we caught a few more fish for an afternoon snack. Out came the pork chops that night.
In reality, we did poorly in our first day’s attempts, in part due to steep-sided shorelines and our inexperience. We didn’t have live bait, which would prove to be very important, and were depending on flies and, more so, artificial lures. But the boats ran well, and we got rid of some of the trepidation of getting them out onto the unknown of the Sea of Cortez for the first time. Another plus was that the wind did not come up in the afternoon. Eastward, out from Bahia de Los Angeles, there is a large island running north-south and a passage called “Canal Sal Se Puedes,” which translates very roughly as “Get out of here if you can.” It’s because of strong tides, as in the Bay of Fundy, and was named by early Spanish explorers.
The following morning, we broke our simple camp at early light and had an uneventful day on the road, other than dealing with road-hogging, highballing Mexican big rigs. There was only one intimidating armed checkpoint, and gas was no problem. Well down Highway 1 at midday, we came over a rise and saw palm trees and green fields in a distant valley, a far cry from the arid desert-and-cactus landscape that much of Highway 1 winds through. We found a field filled with trucks and horse trailers and paid some of the ever-present young boys to watch our vehicles while we walked a short way into town, looking for a supermercado. San Ignacio is a farming-region oasis. I was able to buy sweet onions, scallions, limes, green peppers, red peppers, pasilla peppers, Anaheim peppers, cilantro, fresh garlic, cabbage, carrots, early corn, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and several sacs of freshly made corn tortillas that we would consume at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A strange acidic fruit, which was then new to me, would prove to be a wonderful discovery . . . the tomatillo. I remember the store clerk smiling when she lifted the tomatillos out of my basket and grinning with a sun-withered face that said “Muy bueno!” My foraging trip provided everything I needed for a week except the fish. For the first night, I bought some good-looking chorizo sausage and fresh rolls.
On the several-block walk back to our truck, we passed storefront buildings that looked like they were out of a Western movie and saw a red-tile-roofed adobe building that had a winding line of people in front. Not wanting to miss something cultural, my friend, who spoke a little Spanish, asked a guy we passed, “What’s going on?” He smiled widely and said in broken English, “It’s a museum. You should go in!”
Fifteen minutes later, I reached its arched doorway. Peering over smaller locals in front of me, I realized that there was a simply dressed body laid out on a table. That explained the candles, silence, and organ music. I turned around and ushered my friends out with a finger held up to my lips. We had come upon a visitation and probably were the butt of a good joke played on the gringos with the boats.
After a stop at the hielo, where beer and ice are much cheaper than in the mercado, we headed east and down the infamous Santa Rosalia grade. Burned-out trucks in a cactus-filled canyon silently told drivers to take it easy. The bottom of the grade led to Santa Rosalia and the Guaymas ferry and beyond that to an imposing prison, holding an earlier-generation El Chapo, perhaps, and San Lucas.
Recently a friend and I were reminiscing about Baja trips, and he offered to dig up some digital images of San Lucas taken on a recent journey. There were the sunsets I remembered, but his photos showed a massive beachside RV park. We arrived 28 years earlier to find a half dozen waterside palapas, the thatched-roof open-side dwelling common on Mexican beaches, on a huge lagoon-like cove. There was one freshwater spigot and a crude restroom . . . all that we needed.
We spent a warm afternoon setting up camp and getting our boats in the water. We launched off of a shallow sand beach by hiring local guys at a dollar each to help get the vessels off our partially submerged boat trailers, one a 17-foot Boston Whaler Montauk and the other a 19-foot Ranger center console. We anchored 50 yards off the beach and wore flip-flops to wade in from the boats, because the bilingual Mexican manager had warned us of small poisonous sting rays.
Other than that, it was all that we had fantasized about.
I was sipping my first beer and thinking about dinner . . . possibly a Mexican version of classic Italian sausage with peppers and onions, when someone noticed a raven-haired senorita in a flowing, lacy white skirt gliding toward us. “Want some fresh abalone?” she asked. We would nickname her the abalone girl. She offered abalone fritters and fresh steamed shrimp from a round, covered palm-thatch tray. We would come to love this young lady. On another night, she brought lobster . . . at a slightly higher price, but still an amazing bargain and fresh from the sea. My chorizo never came out of the cooler that night. Instead, for a one-dish, eye-opening breakfast at dawn, I would slice it and scramble it with eggs, Farmer John hash browns, and sweet onions.
We breakfasted at dawn because a beach-camping neighbor with his own boat had told us that we needed to be on the water early to “make bait.” It would be the secret to catching dorado (called mahi mahi in Hawaii).
We collected bait using Japanese lures similar to trout wet flies on a multiple-hook rig that we jigged, then we ran offshore many miles looking for sailfish, dorados, and sargasso weed that in a hot sea and bright sunlight would provide meager cover underneath a soon-to-be broiling sun, but cover enough to attract the sought-after fish, Several hours of unproductive trolling took us close to soaring 20-foot-wide manta rays, and we sighted 80-foot-long right whales, as well as dolphins and flying fish. Early whalers named the behemoths “right” because they yielded huge amounts of oil. Finally I picked a single Spanish mackerel from among the dead sardinas that hadn’t survived hours in my rectangular live-bait well, which was made for largemouth bass, and rigged it with a nose hook and stinger trailer. I trolled if far behind the boat and was rewarded with a single 20-pound dorado that “lit up” as it came to the gaff, showing us why we were there and providing our first fish dinner.
Near our cove inlet, I spotted a huge drifting plank, perhaps remnants of a hatch cover from a distant freighter or part of a pier destroyed by a fast-traveling chubasco storm. My partner jumped overboard and secured a tow rope to a conveniently located rusty iron ring. It would make a dish-washing table and fish-cleaning bench.
We got better at the dorado fishing, drawing them in with the bait and even catching several using fly rods, releasing all but one fish for a dinner each day, a catch that would prove to be our culinary delight.
Dorado Four Ways
For our first night’s protein, I sautéed trimmed dorado fillets that had been dusted in flour seasoned with garlic salt and paprika. I also drizzled shucked corn with lime juice and dusted it with chipotle powder, then wrapped it, accompanied by cilantro and butter, in heavy-duty foil and put it on our campfire coals while the fish cooked. Salad was iceberg lettuce wedges and Wishbone salad dressing. It had been hot that day, and we wanted a light meal with minimal preparation time.
Our next night’s meal was fish and Mexican potato chips. Our boater neighbor brought grouper and cabrilla to add to our dorado and joined us. The abalone lady provided more of her delights for appetizers. I dipped the fish chunks into a beer batter made with Bisquick and Tecate and deep-fried them in small batches using a thick-walled Dutch oven as my cooking vessel. (See “Fried Fish and Abalone Fritters: Fishing and Eating along the Sonoma Coast” in this column in the January/February 2013 issue of California Fly Fisher.) All that we needed was a vinegary coleslaw and warmed tortillas. Those beer-batter fish chunks turned into great Baja-style fish tacos.
Dorado dinner number three was more adventurous. On a large griddle, I sautéed dorado fillets dredged in the same seasoned flour, but kept them on one side while I cooked the assorted peppers, quartered tomatillos, onion, and tomato wedges on the other, making it interesting by adding Cajun spice. The flavors married beautifully. My cooked fish was transferred to dinner plates and then dressed with the vegetables and sprigs of cilantro. Our starch was a simple saffron rice.
We took a break from dorado and cabrilla and ate grilled lobster brought by our adopted abalone lady the next evening. We tipped well and threw in some Taster’s Choice as a bonus.
Our final evening meal at San Lucas was simple. We would break camp in the morning and head south for Punta Chivata. I didn’t want lots of prep time or dishes to wash, so I filled foil packets with dorado chunks, peppers, onion, corn kernels, garlic slivers, cilantro, olive oil, butter, and white wine and laid them on a rack above the coals for 40 minutes while we enjoyed beers and a sunset. The packets simmered and steamed on the coals while my sous chef put together another great coleslaw with cabbage, carrots, and bits and pieces from our dwindling larder. Tortillas were our starch.
We would reprovision in the morning in Mulege. As my friend Captain Harry once said, “It doesn’t get much better than breaking bread and sharing drink with good friends.” Throw in rousing adventure in one of Mother Nature’s spectacular settings, and you’ve got memories to cherish for a lifetime.
