Puerto Peñasco 2025

[jrodda]

Interesting place! Caught a cold that started the day before leaving. Morning of leaving, I had a few false starts before I successfully got out of bed. Woof. Would have called out sick if it were work for sure.

7 hour drive, no serious traffic there. 405 -> 805 -> 8 -> 98 -> Calexico border crossing. I've never taken the 8 through eastern SD county so that was a nice change of scenery for me. Acorn casino was awfully busy for Friday at noon.

Mexicali was confusing, thank god for Google maps. Then southeast through a bunch of broken down farm/industrial towns. Passed by a man selling peanuts at the local speed bump.

Then a 50 mile straight highway through desert. Lonely but decent two lane road, easily cruise 70.

Then another 70 miles through desert, winding around a bit, very boring, but keeping speed. A few glimpses of the very top of the Golfo de California. Kinda brown and salty that far up though.

Arrived to our resort, the Bella Sirena, at 4pm. I got out of the car and I was pretty lightheaded, but got us checked in alright.

We walked down the beach to our first dinner on the beach. I was a little too wiped out to fish during the first afternoon.



Set an alarm for 0500, slept in til 0545. Dragged myself out to the beach.

The tides here are wicked. According to Windy they were 0'-14' while I was there. I would believe it if it were even more. I worked an 0900 low tide. Every 15 minutes or so, I would look up and realize the beach had changed just a little bit.

There ran two sets of rocky reefs parallel to the beach, with about 50-100 yards of sand separating them. On this first morning, only the last outside reef was submerged in water. I walked out and started casting, looking for my first bite. I knew if I couldn't get bit here I would be the biggest fool on the planet, but it took switching through a 1oz KM, a 5" white grub, then noticed the schools of micro bait swimming at my feet. So I switched to a 1oz c-rig with a white perch grub to get my first fish, almost instantly too.

Welcome to a home away from home!



Happy to get my skunk off with an extra colorful spotty, but still a bit nervous not to catch a new species.

The bite went wide open with the perch grub. I was getting bit every single cast, catching fish probably every other cast. All micro spotties. Biggest was around 10".



I finished the morning with around 30 spotties to my name, no other species. Fun fishing on the perch setup!

I'm really trying to relay the tide movement here because it's pretty unbelievable, I suppose due to how high up it is in the already narrow gulf.





Did some stuff through the middle of the day. Had some fresh oysters that tasted like a launch ramp at this bayside eatery.



Croaker in a market.




In the afternoon I decided to find some cracks between the Arizonians on the beach to cast. I was now working the top of the tide. The high rocks in the above pictures were completely submerged, and the backside of my casts were working the sandy bottom.



I had a feeling that would open up my species a little bit. There was a lot of loose orange algae in the water which I feared would ruin the session, but my very first cast, I got bit as soon as I hit water. A fun fight and I got my first Leatherjack!



After getting the algae off of the line and the fish released, my next cast was also an instant hookup. This persisted, and I went about 6 for 9 casts. Then as I was handling the last one, its dorsal stabbed me really good. I dropped it and started bleeding quite a bit (I just now was reading that these fish have venom in these fins, which might explain the pain, but it thankfully didn't swell).



Got it back in the water and I didn't have a towel to wipe off, so I went back to the resort to clean up. Spent the rest of the evening resting, as the cold was still taking a lot out of me.



Sunday morning, got of bed at 0600. Went to the local jetty. No wind, very clear. I saw some aquarium type fishes close to the rocks, definitely sergeant majors alongside possible wrasse and balloonfish. I brought some crappie hair jigs and KMs, but they were uninterested. Maybe I should have kept the last leatherjack for cut bait. I bet that would have gotten me somewhere. My cold really kicked my ass as I was rock hopping and had to walk back a solid quarter mile to the car once in 90º weather to fetch the KMs. The tide shifted enough to move the visible fish during my walk to the car and I couldn't locate them again. Totally gassed, so I left.


Sunday evening, I went out and cleaned up on the leatherjacks with a fair mix of spotties. I probably caught 40 fish, 25 leatherjacks to 15 spotties. The leatherjacks started putting on a show, and would jump a couple times on a good fight. Very fun on the perch gear.




Long road back today. I accidentally drove into one of the many oddly named express-lanes for the border, and thankfully the border agent just told me not to do it again because I was clearly bewildered and knew I made a mistake. Saved a lot of time...

Do I recommend Puerto Peñasco? They say it's "Arizona's Beach" which is probably more the proper audience. I appreciated being able to rent a Tuscan Villa style resort condo for a long weekend at a very reasonable price, fish on the beach, and enjoy some subtropical weather. It is quite a boring 7 hour drive to get there, and while the fishing was wide open, it wasn't exactly big Cabrilla or anything extraordinary. I think the water might have warmed up a little early and pushed out some of the variety, so maybe coming in April or May might be better to see more reef fishes, corvina, and flunder. Overall though, good safe accessible beachfront resort area!

[Latimeria]

Great read Jeremy and what a terrible way to start the trip.  I have to admit just looking at the beaches, it yelled Arizona to me for some reason, like a spot Koga would go to drink bad booze.

Congrats on the new species and are those really spotted bass or possibly a different sub species?  They actually look a little different.

Once again, thanks for the report and the bloody hand.  I got stuck with a little sergeant major down in Baja and I swear it f@cked up my hand for the entire week.

[sasquatch]

That's a lot different from the last time I was there. 45 years ago? Lol

[jrodda]

Great read Jeremy and what a terrible way to start the trip.  I have to admit just looking at the beaches, it yelled Arizona to me for some reason, like a spot Koga would go to drink bad booze.

Congrats on the new species and are those really spotted bass or possibly a different sub species?  They actually look a little different.

Once again, thanks for the report and the bloody hand.  I got stuck with a little sergeant major down in Baja and I swear it f@cked up my hand for the entire week.

The spotties sure did seem brighter, I'm guessing due to the 81° water. I really have a hard time believing they aren't at least a different subspecies but all the serious sources say it's one species.

I mentioned Koga to several Arizonians while I was down there, they all said they still remember the smell.

[Tim524]

Cool adventure down South, bummer you had The Crud !

Driving thru Desert is quite boring

You bled red on Foreign soil, Rebel all the way !!!

Speaking of Koga, he has Lock Jaw lately