ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL DELIVERY

After putting the boat back in shape we made plans for a quick delivery to Cabo. The amount of work was staggering. The crew included myself, Eliseo Herrera, Erik Carmack (the captain from Shannon Rose) and Kyle Kritz. I had invited some others to go but they couldn't make the trip. Bummer, they blew it!

All the subcontractors came together and did whatever was needed to make it happen. Many thanks to John Gumb Yacht Management, Shelter Island Boatyard, Pacific Edge and Viking Marine for going above and beyond to help me out.

We arrived in Ensenada at daylight, fueled the boat (85 cents a gallon cheaper than San Diego) and cleared into Mexico along with importing the boat. With all the hassles and new regulations, it was the only thing that made sense. It is also way easier to import the boat in Ensenada than Cabo.

We departed Ensenada at 11 a.m. running at 10 knots.

That put us at San Benitos at daylight, perfect timing for some yellowtail action.

We weren't really super set up for fishing as all of our gear from the yellow boat was in a bodega in Cabo. We just had a hodgepodge of whatever I could piece together. After taking turns on watches all night we turned the corner at Benitos and it was bird school city. At first it was hard to get through the jumbo calico bass to catch a yellowtail. Many of these were in the 6- to 8-pound class. The catch over the first hour was probably half calicos and half yellows. Then the fish moved off the kelp line and onto the structure. It was straight sonar fishing (we still have the good CH 37 sonar on this boat). We caught all we wanted with doubles, triples and quads. All of the fish landed on the Yo-Yo were a nice grade, weighing more than 20 pounds.

We still didn't have any bait on the boat as we departed to Turtle Bay for fuel. On the way by Cedros we thought we would slide in and sonar around looking for macks. Couldn't find any in the stock zones so we slid up to a couple of kelps and started throwing some swimbaits for calicos. As we were approaching one of the kelps I saw some sardines flipping so we threw out the sabiki rigs and started loading up the tank. It turned out to be a mix of 5-inch sardines and 4- to 6-inch greenies. We caught a few hundred and took off for Turtle Bay. I was wishing they were bigger but felt good about having anything on the boat.