Fishing in the Shadow of Volcanoes – San Quintin Bay, a half day’s drive south from San Diego

Wherever I have lived throughout my life, I have enjoyed the outdoors and especially any bodies of water or waterways near those areas I have been. Fishing has always been the recreational draw that pulls or pushes me anywhere, regardless of why I might move; whether work, relationship, family, or just a dart thrown at a map, I have sought and found the fishing opportunities not long after arriving.

Moving to the San Quintin area in 2015 was more accident than planned and happened enroute to a place yet defined other than by distance and whether I could make a round-trip to San Diego in a day. So, given I can sometimes time the crossing well and not sit for hours in northbound border traffic, about four-to-five hours driving time one way to downtown and the office where I would need to pick up my bi-weekly check that would afford my living in Mexico. I headed south aiming for somewhere between Ensenada and El Rosario.

After checking online for examples of rentals, I had a general idea of a few places to check out within budget but knew I would find better deals speaking with locals along the way. My normal M.O. when spending extended time in Baja is to find an area, make a weekly or monthly deal at a cheap motel, and if I want to stay several months, look for a monthly rental through local channels; people you meet while out and about and notes posted outside of tiendas. As I made my way south, I looked into a few of the online rentals. A two-bedroom house for $600 US in La Misión was tempting, but over budget, a trailer by the Rosarito Beach Pier was within budget but I wanted to be south of Ensenada and in a more rural setting.

There were possibilities in Camalu, Colinet, and in the San Quintin Valley, but I decided to go to the southern end of my range and look there, as I wanted to be as far from the border as I could and still do a one-day turnaround to San Diego, which was one of two basic requirements.

I was thinking El Rosario but decided to check out Cielito Lindo Hotel because my few stops had the sun setting as I was passing the Los Pinos Pemex. I typically avoid night-driving in Baja, and the cat started yowling. That’s right, Mollison McReedy, the survivor found when mouse-sized and starving in the rocks on Mission Beach Jetty was moving south, too. She’d lived in Mexico before, back when she was a younger, better murderer of scorpions and mice when we lived outside of La Paz 2005 to 2008. Tired from the road, I pulled off the highway at the Los Piños Pemex station and headed four miles toward the beach to the fabled Hollywood hangout.

Maybe the inspiration first came when John Ford was spying on Japanese vessels in coastal Mexican waters in the late 1930’s during the outbreak of World War Two, or during one of their many fishing trips down the coast after the war, but in the late 1960s Ford’s wartime buddy and Hollywood producer Mark Armistead decided to buy some 400 acres of sandy flat scrub land between the sloughs of Bahia San Quintin and the dunes fronting Playa Santa Maria about 180 miles south of San Diego. There, he created a near exact copy of his favorite hangout in Costa Mesa, El Pescador Restaurant and Bar, and named it ‘Cielito Lindo’, Spanish for ‘pretty little sky’, or it could be ‘nice little heaven’ or any mixture therein, but the implication is that the view is nice.

Large hotel rooms were added in three single-story fourplex units, floored with onyx tiles sourced from the once famous and largest onyx-producing quarry in the world, El Mármol, located inland and about a third of the way down the Baja Peninsula. Armistead, a naval pilot and photographer during the war, installed an airstrip. Soon he and Ford, along with other Hollywood notables, including John Wayne, Henry Ford, and Jimmy Stewart, would escape the ever-present paparazzi and fans of Los Angeles and fly down to Cielito Lindo, assumingly to party to enjoy the great and varied fisheries in the area, including world-class surf perch a short walk away through sand dunes seemingly made for buggies.

Their aim of secrecy and solitude from the masses was met well enough that there are no stories of the Hollywood clan’s exploits while in Cielito, which can seem odd in a country where tales of the famous visitors to Mexico are almost tradition, like writers Steinbeck and Hemmingway and their fishing adventures, or the Lover’s Bridge in Puerto Vallarta, named so due to Elizabeth Tailor and Richard Burton’s affair highlighted during the filming of “Night of the Iguana”, an affair so public that it was condemned as “erotic vagrancy” by the Vatican.

Liz and Richard’s affair is also pointed to as the beginning of the public ‘craze’ of fandom, which is why Armistead and company desired a private get-way out of the public eye.

Having heard a bit of the story before going there, I expected to see evidence of the famous builder and former visitors, but there were no pictures behind the bar or signed headshots, nada. What stories might have been told about the Hollywood crowd while at Cielito Lindo, if at all, circulated away from the eyes and ears of historians, the press, or any other public record. What is known is that when the highway was paved and throngs of RVs full of tourists began venturing south beyond Ensenada, Mark Armistead put the place up for sale and it was bought by Juanita Fitzpatric in 1975.

Though she sold the restaurant, bar, and hotel to a ranching family from Mexicali prior to my moving here, Juanita still holds title to the leased properties on the remaining acreage where some 37 residents have built off-grid homes.

A lot runs one-hundred dollars down and sixty-five dollars per month. Most are on solar and have generators as backup, as do the bar, restaurant, and hotel. Water is delivered to storage tanks, or ‘pilas’, by truck at a reasonable price. Every day, rain or shine, at 4pm, happy hour draws the residents to the outdoor seating area, where locals, dogs, and guests all mingle.

Given the beach was walking distance away, the affordable rates, and a decent kayak launch (the other of my two requirements) at the bay mouth a few miles up the spit, Cielito Lindo soon became my home base.

I hadn’t yet realized the potential of the area, having previously lived in La Paz and Mulege, and spending all my time when vacationing somewhere between Gonzaga Bay and the East Cape, I was used to near-tropical Sea of Cortez water and Tucson-like warmth when going to Baja. Though I had spent a lot of time in Baja as a kid and as an adult, exploring and fishing the Pacific side of the peninsula was going to be a new adventure for me.

San Quintin seemed more like Central California in my mind and from social media posts and other short trips through there, gray and cool and a long paddle to the grounds. A fishery that held good rockfish, yellowtail, and white seabass if you had the boat to do 25-40-mile round trips. So, not the best for kayak-angling, I thought. I got a little spoiled on the Sea of Cortez side where one can paddle out and chase dorado and tuna within a mile of the beach, and speaking of, catch yellows chucking iron from shore.

San Quintin seemed a bit foreboding with its gray skies, not so ancient volcanoes, shallow bay, and shallow sloping beaches.

My first launches at the bay mouth resulted in lots of sand bass and a couple small halibut, and my first sand crab-chucking beach trips produced some barred surf perch and corbina. I learned more about the history of the place and fishery and began taking trips on pangas. Catches on the 15 and 240 banks, as well around Isla San Martin were the expected seasonal targets: rockfish, lingcod, and yellowtail from the high spots, seasonal tuna and dorado offshore, and white seabass, halibut, and really good calico bass on and near the kelp at the Island. Often, large sheephead and whitefish were in the mix, too.

As I studied the bay, I found a huge nursery for all kinds of gamefish choked with bait from finfish and large green and white shrimp to unending ghost shrimp beds in massive natural littoral zones, or ‘false bays.’ Bonefish, young black seabass, gulf and broomtail grouper, halibut, sole, sand bass, spotted bay bass, numerous rays, spawning white seabass entering and schools of their juveniles exiting seasonally, and California corbina all visit or inhabit the stretch of bay from the Boca to the back bay behind the Old Mill.

I found I did not have to paddle very far for yellowtail, I caught one in the shallows near the launch at the Boca, and several within the mile and a half paddle from there to the point.

Over the years since first fishing in the San Quintin area in 2015, I have caught my personal best California corbina (5.7-pounds) and barred surf perch (3.17-pounds) from the beach, and from the kayak in the boca, my personal best California halibut (44-pounds), white seabass (55-pounds), and kept black seabass (75-pounds).

After first arriving tired with an aging grouchy cat, I made a deal with the owner of Cielito for a monthly rate for one of their spacious rooms. I was in no real hurry to find a house, and I still wanted to check El Rosario. I soon became very comfortable there, given the large room and everything provided, along with a restaurant and bar just steps away.

I paid about $300 US per month plus my restaurant tab, which was adjusted to accommodate the fish I provided for meals prepared.

After three months at Cielito, I had adopted a puppy, caught my personal best halibut by kayak at 44-pounds, and made up my mind to stay in the area and was looking for a place with a yard. I was getting tired of the cat being 100% indoors as well, I preferred her usual set-up as an in-out cat that didn’t need a litter box and would happily show off her good work when indoors by depositing mortally wounded scorpions or mice by the front door. Though pushing a decade by then, she still had the murderous instinct of the common American standard cat, and I did not want to deny her the pleasure.

Plus, little Flash Gordon was growing fast and needed a secure yard.

By word of mouth after putting out some feelers, I found a rustic long ell of a house on a well-manicured, treed, and fenced half hectare (about an acre and a quarter) a couple miles from Cielito Lindo in a small neighborhood off the old highway. The highway was moved about a mile east at San Simon for a stretch of about five miles after flooding in the 90s made a bridge a practical solution to constant road repairs.

Several dozen houses, mostly occupied by farm workers, and a couple stores remain along the old stretch just out of the flood zone, and the new place with fig, guayaba, and lots of shade trees was only a few miles from the water. Including rent, electric, gas, water, and internet service, my bills ran about US $200 per month, or about one-sixth of my average monthly pay.

About that, the advice given by my folks on budgeting for a home was to spend no more than one-quarter of your take-home pay on rent or a mortgage.

This was the standard for the blue-collar middle-class; that a single provider could rent an average house on twenty-five percent of their pay. From post-World War Two into the early 1980s, this was the case. For a few years of the later part of that period as a journeyman carpenter, I could easily rent a house. Even working for minimum wage in a kitchen, I could afford a small apartment. In Mexico and outside of the gentrified touristy places, I knew the local economies were more like what we once enjoyed in the United States.

Rents and pay, like in the U.S., vary by location in Mexico.

In the San Quintin area, an average skilled construction worker earns about 500 pesos per day. The average house rents for around 2,500 pesos. My four-bedroom house on the shaded fenced lot was 2,250 pesos, or about $140 dollars at the exchange rate of 15 to 1 at the time. My water bill was 50 pesos, electric averaged 200 pesos, internet was 400 pesos and I used about 150 pesos of propane each month. Cell phone with unlimited service in Mexico, the US and Canada ran 200 pesos per month. Farm workers make about 350 pesos per day, and an apartment in one of the many small communities throughout the San Quintin farming region start at around 800 pesos per month. So, in Mexico, the working classes are much better off considering housing and bills than their US counterparts.

Given the cost of living and my 12-hour or so weekly commitment online for work, I enjoyed a lot of free time for fishing.

I would haul my kayak out to the Boca launch or run to the beach most days of the week, depending on the weather. After a few months, my employer began direct deposit, so I no longer needed to run north once every other week. To remain legally there, I only had to go north to re-up my Forma Migration Multiple, or FMM, once every six months at a cost of around $30. I spent much of my time exploring the bay’s fisheries by kayak or foot, and eventually bought a little boat on a trailer for cheap and traded some unneeded fishing gear for a 15-horsepower motor. Then, I could take my dog Flash Gordon fishing when on the water instead of locking him in the yard while gone.

I stayed in the house there in San Simon for about 18 months until I ran into my first issue with the landlord. When I moved in, I noted that the water pump pressure tank, improperly installed unprotected from weather, was rusting and would need replacement soon. He agreed at the time, but when the tank finally burst, he said replacement was my responsibility.

On principle, I decided not to give him the $200 dollars for the new parts and quickly found another place within budget; a modern two-bedroom, two-bath house on a large, fenced lot fronting the bay on the east side about a mile south of the Old Mill. It was owned by an American and the rent was $200 dollars per month. My utility, internet, and cell phone bills ran about the same as the San Simon place, so the total of around $260 per month was still within my budget. And I had steps to the bay twenty feet from the back gate.

While in San Simon, most of my fishing was in the Boca or the beach and I had not spent much time in the inner and upper bay. After all, having caught many halibut – including a 44-pound, 48” inch personal best, my largest white seabass at 55-pounds, and had constant action at the Boca, it was hard to wrench myself away to try other spots.

When I moved into the bayside house, I tossed a piece of shrimp out just to see what might be feeding in the littoral zone during the high tides. Walking the flats when the tide was out, I could see signs of fish ‘blowing’ out the ghost shrimp, and even the impressions of smaller halibut and large rays in the clay. Within a couple minutes I was on a 20” corbina and knew I had found a fisherman’s paradise of a house.

Soon, I was walking a few strides from my back door with coffee in hand and enjoying some of the best corbina fishing I have ever experienced sitting there on the steps while taking in the fantastic view of the volcanoes and the upper bay.

On a six-foot high tide, the water came up to the top of the second step, while on a minus tide, it was about a hundred yards walk from the steps to the water’s edge. Much of Bahia San Quintin is flat and shallow in the littoral zone between the tides, the bay growing and shrinking up to 20% or more in area daily. On larger tide swings, the vast volume of acre-feet of water rushes through the narrow bay mouth, or Boca, which is why the main channel is cut so deep. Like arteries, channels feed from the main channel into each false bay, creating an image of a lung expanding and contracting with life-giving water through its veins, filling and depleting the littoral zones daily.

Rays, bullseye pufferfish, bonefish, and corbina, mainly, flood into the clay above the eelgrass line on each high tide to feed on the ghost shrimp beds. Spotted bay bass, young grouper, and halibut lurk in the channels and along the rocky edges in the deeper water beyond the lowest tideline.

Though I occasionally hauled the little boat to the point launch at the Boca or the launch at the Old Mill, I began launching my kayak right from my back steps and exploring the mid and upper bay. In doing so, I quickly learned to lock the then two-year-old Flash Gordon in the house while gone.

He would get anxious and escape the yard and swim out after me, and once swam over a half-mile to a sailboat anchored in the channel. After picking him up at the sailboat and scooping him out of the water onto the narrow kayak several times, I realized there was no keeping him in a fenced yard if he really wanted out, so indoors he went on the days I kayak fished. Once the dog situation was addressed, I found that the upper bay channels and rocky edges held plenty of gamefish action.

Fishing from the steps, I would often catch over a dozen quality California corbina on the top couple feet of the tide.

The quote about San Quintin Bay from the highly touted ‘fishing bible’ covering Baja’s inshore waters of the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Cortez, The Baja Catch, is, “Fishing inside the bay is a bust, due to weeds, shoals, and lack of fish.”

This, in spite of the authors’ exhaustive research and decades of Baja experience, is the opposite of the truth. I found the bay choked with fish and a nursery for larger species. My average spotted bay bass has been around 3-pounds, but not many much larger or smaller, though I am sure there is a world record in there at over 4-pounds 15-ounces, which is the standing mark to beat. Though much of the shoreline can be prohibitive to fishing, with a float tube, small boat or kayak, the numerous ghost shrimp beds, the miles of channels and edges, and the plethora of bait makes Bahia San Quintin an excellent fishery for anyone who spends the time to explore it.

As the farming community has grown over recent decades, so has the available sportfishing fleet. Along the road leading into the Old Mill there are several sportfishing operations where one can hire anything from a small panga to a fully fitted Parker. All the operators are excellent guides and know the fisheries inside and outside the bay well.

For surf anglers, the quality of barred surf perch and corbina fishing along the beaches outside the bay to the north and south is first rate in my opinion. Shore-pounding the accessible areas of the bay with lures or bait on high tide can produce some fat spotted bay bass, halibut, small broomtail and gulf grouper, corbina, and bonefish. Inshore and offshore fishing for yellowtail can be ‘off the hook’ seasonally, and the calico bass fishing around Isla San Martin is nothing if not excellent.

So, with all due respect and I otherwise have found their account of those fisheries accurate along either side of the peninsula, Neil Kelly and Gene Kira got this one wrong in The Baja Catch.

Flash and I lived at the house on the bay for a couple years and enjoyed every bit of it. As my work and pay waned, I continued to search out affordable spots in Mexico, and after spending some time in Baja Sur off the Vizcaino coast, I have returned to San Quintin, my old haunt, and my dog’s birthplace; Cielito Lindo. The old cat Molly passed at 18 years old while here last fall and is buried near in a nice spot with a view of the volcanoes and beach.

Over the years when not living here, the old Hollywood hangout has been a required stop when passing through. It is my home port in a lot of ways, and many of the folks here are like family. As with anywhere, the San Quintin area does have some drawbacks, like a persistent onshore wind and the cold-water zone weather can be gray and chilly, or on the days when the wind dies during late summer and early fall, mosquitoes and gnats can be horrific.

But sitting out a few breezy days per week or donning a hoodie and mosquito repellents are minor inconveniences considering the great fishing, broad uncrowded beaches, good people, and amazing intertidal biosphere that is just a half-day’s drive from downtown San Diego.

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