The old adage about making lemonade when given lemons, was true about my first trip to Isla Cedros in Baja California Mexico.
We flew down at the end of March from Ensenada, Mexico. The giant yellowtail that this distant island is famous for hadn’t shown up yet on their yearly migration so we found another good eating substitute.
Four brand new, fully outfitted, Hobie Mirage Outbacks were available through Cedros Tackle along with a very comfortable three-bedroom casita. Jeff Mariani will be running guided kayak fishing trips this summer and fall at the island.
We launched at the north end of town on our first and last day of fishing. The beach launches at Cedros are a cake-walk, it’s as easy as launching from a lakeshore on some days.
Cedros is very similar to Southern California’s Catalina Island, with sandy beaches broken up by rocky structure that extends out away from the beach.
It was on these sandy beaches that we made our lemonade. The halibut bite was on fire in the shallow water with the 4- or 5-inch plastic swim-tail lures. Anything with a white belly was bit.
We wallowed in lemonade, and caught butts up to 25 pounds. We ate like kings each night. We had halibut green-chile enchiladas, mango-avacado salsa on grilled halibut, and fish tacos with frijoles on our last night.
Although the island’s world class calico bass fishing was slow by the locals standards, I had a fantastic time. We caught bass up to 5lbs and I threw lures and iron jigs until my hands were sore.
Our last day of fishing was WFO on barracuda, bass and halibut up to 20 pounds.
I’m checking flight schedules for this fall and availability of the kayaks… I need to pull on some of those big Cedros yellows and I want a calico over 6 pounds!
