Man that sux. One Bonita. Smh. Went on a cruise and stopped in Honduras and caught one lonely Bonita, but I know Honduras is better than that. The weather was jacked up when we were there.
I was in partnership with 3 other guys & our Mexican partner in a 100 space RV park in Cabo for about 10 years and fished the whole east cape area 5 or 6 times a year. Caught a ton of billfish, dorado & tuna. Also cruised my 28' trailerboat from Loreto to Cabo and back 5 times. Did lots of fishing and diving. It was a magical place until about 1990 when the Mexicans let the commercials do what they wanted to with little or no oversight. Last time I was down was in 1995 and won't go back as times have changed too much for me.
I was there a few years after you. It was awesome while we were there but I remember telling my buddy that we better enjoy this place because it won't be like this for long. Seemed like every boat coming in had a marlin strapped to it. Look like a bunch of lucky redneck deer hunters with them strapped to the hood of the car. You could just tell they were keeping everything. Definitely didn't appear to have any sound management in place. Got to practice a little catch and release especially on the Marlin and sailfish.
Starting in about 1975 I started tagging billfish, mostly Striped Marlin. I checked my old log books and I have personally tagged and released 97 Marlin and 10 Sails. Another 100 or so were tagged by friends on my boat. I have only had 2 tags returned, both off Southern California, same place they were tagged. Over 50% were tagged in Mexican waters. In the 70's & 80's it was really wonderful fishing. Off Cabo it was not uncommon to catch & release 5 or 6 fish per day. I remember several times we had triple hookups. It really wasn't until the late 80's/early 90's that catch & release really caught hold on the charter boats there. They started to realize that the resource was going away if they didn't.
Wow CC those were definitely the good ol days. Man that's a lot of Billfish. Couldn't imagine hooking up with that many in one day. And I thought it was good back when I was down there.
This is where I really got the bug to fish the ocean. I had 2 summer jobs in high school at San Clemente on the boat Sum Fun. This was before Dana Harbor was built and San Clemente Pier had a great sport fishing operation. Nelson Cook was the owner and the skipper I worked for was Don Hanson who eventually owned the Dana Point operation. I believe his son has it now.
