Deep-sea Fishin' Hole

Arizona's deep-sea fishin' hole at Rocky Point, south of Ajo, is becoming increasingly popular. Jeep-sea Fishin'

The sporting goods store in Phoenix had just done a new window trim. I had my nose flattened against the glass, like a little boy at a bakery window when the doughnuts come off, admiring the man-sized reels that would hold four and five and six hundred yards of nine strand cuttyhunk line, and foot-long lures, and fishhooks as big as cow-camp pot hooks. A gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and I unflattened my nose and looked around. I know he was a gentleman because he had on a coat and necktie, but above these outlandish contraptions he had that dazed, recently blackjacked look in his eyes that stamps your born fisherman no matter what kind of clothes he wears or how he makes his money to buy fishing tackle.

"What in the name of Time," he exploded impatiently, like I was personally keeping him from going fishing, "do you do with that deep-sea gear out in this desert country where I'm told the jackrabbits come equipped with canteens? Besides that," he speared me with his fisherman eyes when I looked down guiltily, "about half the local cars I see are dragging boats. Why? Come to think of it, these were fair questions from the uninitiated after I'd had a couple of minutes to recover from his verbal onslaught and digest them. You see, he didn't know that from right where we were standing it was only 226.4 miles by my speedometer to Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point), Sonora, Mexico, as sweet a patch of salt water a fisherman ever backlashed a line in.

Like most place names of primitive origin, the village of Puerto Peñasco squats on a jumble of black volcanic rock and sand that juts out from the cast shore of the Gulf of California, and has been there since the beginning of time so far as I know. But it wasn't really discovered by the lay fisherman from north of the Arizona-Sonora boundary until a couple or three years ago, after the Mexican government, as a war measure, had paved the hundred kilometers (this is not as far as it sounds, being only 65 miles as we measure distance) and tied into the Arizona State Highway system which was also paved. It is paved all the way, a four hour drive-if you are a fisherman. I'm told that the drive via Gila Bend. Ajo, Sonoyta, and on to Rocky Point, which I've driven dozens of times, is broken out with flora and fauna of botanical, natural-historical, and geological interest; I wouldn't know. But I'll grant you that there is plenty of flora, cacti style, on both sides of the road against backdrops of dark forbidding mountains, and from time to time I have noted a bighorn sheep or two, a few coyotes, and enough jackrabbits to keep you from worrying about starving to death.

Sonoyta is only a couple of miles in Mexico, but it is as Mexican as if you'd left New York and landed at Vera Cruz, only not so precocious. You've cleared the border, paid $2.20 for your "turista" card, bought a fishing license for six-bits (75c) and are on your way in a foreign land. (And please don't make the mistake too many Americans do; you are the foreigner, not the natives. It's surprising what a haughty, condescending attitude won't get you.)

Hole

A half day drive from central Arizona brings the sportsman to Rocky Point on the Gulf of California. This Sonora port is fishing center. You've been inhaling that dry desert air spiked with sun distilled cacti and sage and think maybe you are drunk, or this is when you were on earth some other time. The rear wheels nudge forward and the engine leans back and snores softly like it was glad you brought it to Mexico. Beyond the black promontory, that for miles has seemed your only link to the universe, you pick up a scintillating blue horizon that beckons restlessly. The wheels bump over a railroad track that comes all the way from Mexicali and breaks the spell. You take another deep breath and this time it has that brackish, fishy taste that is welcome after so much desert seasoned air. The road makes a viggle or two and swoops down among adobe houses and thatch huts and barefooted pedestrians and nut-brown children and nondescript dogs and trucks dripping melting ice and the aroma of fish, and clothes-lines of wash drying horizontally in the wind, and mesquite wood smoke. Youare in Puerto Peñasco. It's the end of the line; the only way out by car is back the way you came.

If you are a fisherman you nearly miss the last wiggle in the road, looking around to make sure you brought your fishing tackle and that it hasn't escaped en route. But here in Rocky Point the fishing fraternity splits and congeals. Up in Oak Creek you're looked on with pity if you're not a trout fisherman, and at Roosevelt Lake you have to listen only to how a big bass got away, but at Rocky Point you can fish wherever, however, and with whatever you please. But if you come in without any fish at all the other worn out, sunburned, crack-lipped, raw-thumbed fanatics know you took a sun-bath on the beach and didn't wet a line. Fish are that plentiful.

For a few dollars per head, depending on how many go, a commercial fisherman will take you out in his squat, seaworthy little boat that somehow makes your nose think of shrimp that have been dead in the sun too long. He will furnish you with hand lines and bait the size of fish you no doubt have had your picture taken with, or of course you can take along your own fancy chromium plated outfit. But don't expect any air-foam unholstered fishing chairs and self-loading fish transoms.

If, because the captain and crew are barefooted and more than likely can't even laugh in English, you have any misgivings about their knowing their fishing grounds, well, my advice would be not to place any bets. According to the season, the moon, the tide, the wind, how much gas they have aboard, and how bad they want to go fishing at the moment, they can tell you what is running and take you where to catch them. If you hanker for your fish in big chunks and don't mind getting jerked around and skinned up a little there are shark, swordfish, Jewfish, and white sea bass in the hundred pound and up class lying in wait to accommodate you.

But here is where I leave you and Rocky Point to swap fish stories and get acquainted. While the trophy hunters are out teasing the big ones or fortifying their innards with tequila sours, I start dragging my little 14 foot boat and outboard motor and camping outfit toward Cholla Bay, which is so aptly named no one has ever felt the need to put up a sign. Cholla (pronounced Cho-ya) is that stuff with stickers on it that we call "jumping cactus" up in Arizona. Just out of town around the head of high tide a dim road turns off in a northwesterly direction. It doesn't look like much of a road and it isn't. But it's passable, and you can't get lost; once you get in the sandy ruts you can't turn off until you get over to the granite hills where you are going.

But for some unknown reason Cholla Bay is a favorite spot for Americans, especially Arizonans. There's not a single thing over there except cholla and ocotillo, granite, sand, and the most beautiful bay you ever laid your eyes on, with a sandy beach that slopes so gently it is a mile between low tide and high tide. There is an oyster bed on the far side and clams most any place you've a mind to dig. In the late spring the water is alive with crabs as big as your hand. Any kind of a gig will do-spearing them being the main problem. And back up in the salt marshes there are land-locked shrimp that have been there so long they have a crust on their backs and grown to around eighteen inches long. But those are just things to while away the time when you're resting from fishing.

After you have been down a couple of times you will locate a camping spot to your liking. I drop the boat and trailer close to the water and hurry over to my spot. The Settlement of Rocky Point consists of a few houses and straw-thatched huts. Some accommodations available.

First thing I do is set up a light fresh-water bass outfit. For the next hour I set up camp with one hand and watch the sea gulls with the other. Other campers, if any, are smugly lolling in the shade of their outfits watching me work with one eye, and the sea gulls with the other.

Usually, if the tide is coming in, about the time I get the tent pegged down and take a last quick look before crawling inside for a couple of minutes to set up the center pole, I see a flight of wheeling, diving, screaming sea gulls. A school of sea trout are coming in. The center pole will have to wait. I grab my rod and head for the beach. The smug lollers do likewise on the double. Some wear hip-boots, some waders, others just whatever they happen to have on at the moment. (I saw one lady just returning from Rocky Point grab her rod and dash for the water in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and high heeled slippers.) Fifty yards or so off shore a school of flashing, darting sardines are having a bad time with the sea trout boiling the water around and among them, and the gulls diving at them when they break water. But the sea trout are not fussy; they will snap up anything that moves. They will average around four pounds but you're bound to hook one sometime that will go eight or ten pounds if you keep dabbling a line in the water.

Things stop as suddenly as they began. Everybody makes a few casts without a strike. The school has moved out. For the first time you notice that the water is decidedly on the chilly side. The beach is full of flopping silvery fish; no one has bothered about whose is which. There's plenty for everybody's supper even if they were all going to have company, and enough left over for cutbait in the morning.

The next morning is when the serious fishing takes place. Come daylight, the gear, a jug of water, and a couple of sea trout for cut-bait are tossed in the boat and her nose headed for Pelican Point and the open gulf out at the end of the headland where it is steep and rocky and full of dark blue water. From here on your guess is as good as mine. When you impale a foot-long strip of sea trout on an appropriate Children of Rocky Point divide their time between the sand and the sea. Most of townspeople are fishermen.

A size hook and begin trolling it a hundred yards or so behind the boat, most anything can happen. A nice congenial atmosphere exists in the ocean; everything that lives, and manages to keep on doing so, is always busy trying to eat his smaller neighbors and keep his larger ones from eating him. I don't know where this exhilarating cycle stops. But out beyond Pelican Point the customers are tough enough and hungry enough that their chief occupation is snapping up passers-by when they're not looking.

I have had my bait and hook nipped off neatly without much more than tightening the line, and this with a steel piano wire leader. By what, I don't know. Pintos and granddaddy sea trout up to twelve and fifteen pounds are the usual catch, but I have caught albacore, cabrilla, striped rock bass, flounders, and a half dozen varieties I couldn't find a picture of in my fish book. If you're one of these restful fishermen who like to keep one foot on dry land, you can hook on anything from a ball of bread dough to the hind leg of a jackrabbit and chunk it out as far as you can, and in no time at all if the tide is coming in, you will be disturbed by a healthy tug on your line. Again it might be anything, cochee, triggerfish, sheepshead, rock bass, lobster at some seasons, or maybe even a sea turtle. But there's one thing you can be sure of; anything you set your hook in will give you plenty of fight for its size. I think some of the bigger ones out beyond the Point go down and brace their feet against the rocks, the way they set back and make a reel whine.

So, without going into my favorite fish stories (which you wouldn't believe anyhow) this is the fishing picture reasonably accurate. But lest you conclude that it's fisherman's heaven with no irksome aspects and I find my favorite camping spot cluttered up with folks looking for my scalp the next time I go down, there's a couple of other things I'd better mention. If you like shade, take an umbrella; the nearest trees big enough to shade a fat lizzard are a few discouraged little tamaracks in Puerto Peñasco, eight sandy miles away.

And the weather is not always like the day they took the postcard picture. A gale can blow up on the slightestRocky coast line gave port its name. The government of Mexico plans to make this port a shipping center. provocation. This is a good time to let the fish alone and go to town. I did this the third day of a four day blow last winter and when I came back my tent was down and everything covered with a foot of sand.

If you take your own little boat remember, all that beautiful beckoning water is an ocean to all intent and purpose, complete with a tide and everything. It can squall up quick and it plays for keeps. There's no police to call, and no fire department to get your cat out of the tree. You're on your own. You should be a fair sailor with a good weather eye, and gumption enough to come in and secure your boat before a blow gets started. The old days of having to pack in your ice and gasoline are over; ice is usually available, and a good grade of gas at only a few more cents a tankful than 'States prices. Also standard brands of American canned goods. The fresh meat is dark and red and local, and kept in airy screened compartments which keeps out all but the most ingenious flies.

Counting grownups, children, burros, pups, and next spring's baby expectancy, there are probably five hundred souls in and around Puerto Peñasco, yet there isn't a well or spring of fresh water within miles of the town. Each dwelling and place of business has an oil drum or similar container with a couple of boards for covers, and enterprising young businessmen with tanks mounted on truck chassis haul in water from wherever they can get it, and keep the containers filled for a small fee. But a little boiling or a couple of chlorine tablets will fix the water for the most squeamish stomachs and delicate constitutions. Come to think of it, there is very little reason to drink water anyhow with every other door a cantina serving good Mexican beer and back-bars of liquor stocks that would be the envy of many ritzier spots in the 'States.

All in all I like it. Whether you catch a fish or collect a sunburn on the beach, or get throwed in the hoosegow for too much exuberance in a country that intelligently holds the mid-day siesta sacred, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts something will happen to make you remember the trip and want to go back again. And you will go again.

Fishing launches, for use by visiting Americans, can be rented although many sportsmen use their own boats.