We have just rounded The Friars, the colossal rock formations that mark the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, where the warm waters of the Gulf of California and the cold Pacific meet to produce one of the world’s fabled sportfishing grounds. The Spanish conqueror Cortés named The Friars when he first spied them back in the 16th century, and from a distance they do resemble a procession of hooded monks. Up close, they loom hundreds of feet above us. Crabs scuttle along their flanks; frigate birds and pelicans perch on their ledges. “Look, Dad!” my 8-year-old son, Terrence, shouts, pointing at a seal and her pup basking on an outcropping in the early-morning sun.
I think of the first time I took Terrence fishing, on the eastern end of Long Island. He was 6 then, and I watched his eyes widen as the kid-size spinning rod I’d bought him was bent nearly double by a leaping three-pound bluefish at the other end of the line. He’d boated a second blue, and back home I’d filleted them and put them on the grill. “Listen up,” I told him. “When you catch a fish, you have to eat it.”
“What!?”
Terrence’s idea of a gourmet meal at that time was a cheeseburger at McDonald’s (pickle removed). I remember he watched skeptically as I applied lemon juice and salt and pepper (not exactly on his top ten list of condiments) to my fillet. But he grudgingly followed suit. “So what’s the verdict?” I asked him after he’d taken his first cautious bite.
“It’s delicious!”
Last year we went surfcasting for striped bass on the Long Island shore. The rod was too big for him to cast, so I did it—with no luck. On my last cast, I handed the rod to him: It was my best move of the day. Instantly a striper was on the line, and it was just over the legal keeper length. (With the possible exception of North Atlantic salmon, which I fly-fish for in Canada, I don’t think there’s a sweeter-tasting fish.) He managed to bring it in on his own, his feet dug into the sand. “Dad,” he said, “should we fillet it or grill it whole?”
And now we’ve come to Cabo San Lucas, in Baja, for Terrence’s first deep-sea fishing adventure (which, before the day is done, will turn out to be a lot more adventurous than I had bargained for).
Our boat is a 26-foot Glacier Bay catamaran with twin 150-horsepower outboards, designed for standup-fly or spinning-rod fishing and legendary for its seaworthiness. Our captain is Grant Hartman, the general manager of Baja Anglers and, we’ve been told, one of the best saltwater fly-fishing guides in Cabo.
I tell Hartman that I hope Terrence will have the thrill of hooking a dolphin—the fish, not the bottle-nosed mammal. The problem, he says, is that the dolphin (known locally as dorado) have moved to an equatorial current some 40 miles offshore, where the water temperature is about 72 degrees. It could be a little rough, he warns. Let’s give it a shot, I say.
Well, it is rough. When we start out, the swells are running about six feet. On top of this, a nasty chop is kicking up. My wife, Suzanne, isn’t prone to seasickness. And any concern I have about Terrence quickly disappears: As if he were on a roller coaster, he gleefully yells, “Whee!” as we endlessly rise up and plunge down in the troughs.
Still, to ease the pounding we’re taking, Hartman throttles back to 20 miles an hour. The swells increase. The wind picks up. “Do you want to go back?” he asks. I glance at Terrence. He seems okay. “Not after coming this far,” I tell him.
Finally we reach the edge of the target current. Hartman points out the change in water color, from an intense green to one with a bluish tint. The boat is too unstable to think of casting—at least at our level of expertise—so Arturo, the mate, sets out two spinning rods trolling artificial lures on 25-pound-test line. Ten minutes later—at 11 a.m.—the starboard line starts screeching. By the time we get a harness on Terrence, at least 175 yards of line have run out. Since there’s no fighting chair, I serve as one, braced against a storage bin, feet planted on the nonskid deck, my arms wrapped around him. As soon as the line stops running out, Hartman begins backing down toward the fish.
Terrence starts reeling. The line tightens. He pumps and reels, pumps and reels. The fish races toward the boat. Terrence reels faster. Then the line zips out again. The line cuts back and forth with incredible speed. Now, at last, after what seems an eternity, the line is going straight into the water, not 20 feet from the starboard motor. “I can’t reel anymore,” Terrence gasps. Arturo, leaning out over the side from the command center above us, cries, “Wahoo! Big one!” The wahoo, a major-league game fish that makes marvelous eating, is a startlingly swift ocean predator with needle-sharp teeth. With his jaw clamped grimly, Terrence pumps and reels two more times, and Arturo manages to gaff the fish and drop it into a deck well. I look at my watch. It’s taken 35 very long minutes. Terrence is four feet two. His wahoo, its silvery length glistening, easily beats him by another two feet.
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