By Brad Billinslgey
A retired general contractor from California.

My wife and I have been traveling to Mexico for about 45 years. We discovered Baja a little over 20 years ago and have made it our destination once or twice every year since. The majority of my fishing in Baja has been between East Cape and Los Cabos. Outside of the Pacific side of Cabo  I’ve never done any  fishing on the west coast of the peninsula, especially the northern Pacific coast until now.

After my wife and I retired we moved to the small community of Calafia Condos, about 25 miles south of the U.S. border. We’ve been in Calafia a year now and absolutely love it here. Our place is right on the ocean and even after a year we’ll sit out on the deck, with a glass of vino and giggle about our good fortune.  My good friend Max and his wife Anne came down here from New Mexico and rented a place for the months of Feb. and March.  He’s been my fishing partner for as long as I can remember and this would be a great opportunity to fish the Baja Norte Pacific waters. I visited Ensenada and checked out the fishing there.  Drove out to Puerto Santo Tomas on 20 miles of bad road and checked it there also, but finally decided to try the fishing right here near Calafia, out of a small fishing village named Popotla.

Short drive and after seeing the catches the local fishermen were bring in, it seemed like the place to be. Max and I made arrangements with a local fisherman to take us out in his panga (small fishing boat) for a day of sport fishing.

We left Popotla, after a unique beach launch, at about 7am. The ride was a short one of about 20 mins almost straight out to an area the two Pangeros called the rock pile. Jaime and Luis were our boatmen and both spoke better English than I spoke Spanish so conversation was no problem. Weather was terrific, water was flat and from the time I first dropped my line to the bottom till we pulled up and left it was constant action. The fish were all bottom dwellers, mostly a collection of rock cod, ling cod, and whitefish. Some were smallish but we bagged plenty of 4-6 pound fish. I had a couple of better fish, but as luck would have it they turned into deep water releases. One fish that felt real good took me to the rocks and we parted company as my line parted as well.

For the 4-5 hours of fishing if I wasn’t getting bit or reeling in fish I was fishing with a bare hook. Aside from the great fishing we were always being entertained by the huge schools of porpoise swimming by or the migrating Sperm whales that kept spy hopping around us checking us out. We had about all the fishing we wanted by noon so we headed in to the beach. After a unique exit from the small surf we chose a dozen or so of our catch and had Mona, one of the fish stall ladies, filet them up for us. We left with a bag full of filets,  only a small portion of the total catch, and had a wonderful all you can eat fish dinner that evening and still put up a bunch in the freezer for future fish feeds.

Popotla is a unique and wonder small fishing village south of Rosarito Beach. Nothing like any place I’ve been to in lower Baja. Far more ‘Mexico’ than East Cape or Los Cabos. Actually my friend Max put a word to it as we sat in the Panga, waiting to launch, looking up the beach ant the assortment of ramshackle buildings and huts. He called it ‘Rustic’. Oddly enough, it is located right next to the film studio where they filmed the Titanic. I called it a place I look forward to revisiting time and time again. Matter of fact we’ve already set up another day of fishing and can’t wait to go. I’ll write about it soon and send some pictures along as well.