Punta Chivato

[udowinkler]

You are living the dream, buddy!

Originally Posted by rossman

I decided to take a trip to the Punta Chivato area for a little camping and fishing. I got all packed up and was set to leave early Monday morning. Low and behold when I tried to start my truck I had a dead battery. This has happen three other times since I have been down here where the process of packing withe the dome light being on for an extended period that the apparently weak battery got drained. Well at 5 30 am there are not a lot of people moving around to give me a jump, so I improvised by jumping to my 12 v LiFPo sonar/GPS battery. Wasn't sure it had the cranking power to turn over a V6 but with one second of cranking it started right up. Since I was planning on camping in a real wilderness area I decided to try to purchase a new battery if I could find one on the way. Vizcaino was all closed up when I went through there and I stopped at two places in San Ignacio for no love. Got to Santa Rosalia and at my third stop there I found a battery. Installed it and off I went. I drove another 20 or so klicks to San Bruno and found a road heading along the coast suitable for a 2 WD truck but probably not a sedan. Drove 8 or 10 miles on this road and found a nice camping spot on a point, which was probably the point that is closest to Isla San Marco.

My camp

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Isla San Marcos
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Went out for an afternoon session. It was very warm compared to Asuncion. Amazingly I had cell service there and my weather app told me the local temp was 101. Water temp was 78.5. I was digging it but my dog was a little uncomfortable in the heat.
I managed to land a few roosters that were cruising around in packs. Every one landed were followed to the yak by massive schools of roosters. All were very small but fun on light tackle.

Rooster
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Went back to camp after a couple hours to hydrate and make sure you he dog is as staying cool. Then I did a little snorkeling in the shallows. The boulder and cobble areas were filled with all manner of Cortez reef dwellers and the Sandy areas were carpeted with rays. It was looking down on a covey of quail as the scattered in every direction as I swam over them.

Did a little shore fishing and managed a few corbina and other assorted reef dwellers.

I hit the water again early in the morning and trolled Rapalas in some deeper water around some massive bait schools that would pop up. At one time I was about half way to the island and still only in 30 ft of water so that is a pretty shallow channel. Lots of currents and eddies with the full moon tide swing.

Managed a few of these.
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And these
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And these
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But the shark's were a real pain. There hitting my Rapalas and spoons and pretty much everything I trolled. It one point I was trolling two Rapalas and both went off at the same time. The one that hit my spinning outfit hit so hard it broke up but off in my rod holder and then chewed through my line and took my Rap. The other one I got to the yak and promptly broke the Rapalas trying to get it unhooked. Pretty expensive 10 minutes.

Couple other weird occurrences. I decided to try to make some bait since loosing all this tackle was starting to annoy me. First drop with the sabiki I hook up with a Manta Ray with about a 4 ft wing span. Put up quite a fight and when I got him to the yak his tail was whipping around, and I couldn't remember if I hey could sting or not but I was sure he could leave a welt, so I cut him loose. New sabiki, next drop and I get 4 spotted and 2 triggers. Never did get any usable bait. At one point I was bringing my sabiki in and a school of some kind of Jacks followed it in and just swam around my kayak for a couple minutes. I immediately threw some iron and megabaits and surface stuff but they showed no interest. They were big fish, all around 3 ft long with forked tails. Not sure what they were. I don't think I have ever seen a jack cravelle (sp) but that might have been what they were.

I had more of the same type of action throughout the day on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and headed home Wednesday afternoon.