Work that week flew by with apparent light speed and I would like to say that my American Airlines flight from LaGuardia to Dallas and on to San Diego was uneventful, but it wasn't. On final approach to Dallas/Fortworth International Airport our landing had to be abruptly cancelled because the pilot and co-pilot couldn't get an indicator light that the landing gear was down. He indicated that the gear was probably down, but without the indicator light, they couldn't confirm that it was locked in-place. After about 20 minutes of circling around the airport, our plane made another approach and landed without incident. There were a few upset people on the plane, but everyone was orderly during the incident.
I was lucky because I happened to be sitting across the aisle from another American pilot who was 'dead heading' (which means he didn't have a working flight from LaGuarida and had to fly back to his home airport as a passenger). Good for me because during the 'little incident' he gave me the inside scoop on what really going on. He didn't seem concerned at all so it immediately put me ease. As the crew was working on the problem and we didn't know if it was going to even be fixable he leaned over to me and said "don't worry the MD-80 is the best belly landing plane we have in our fleet". I imagine that I could have allowed a statement like that to panic me, but there was some something about the casual way he said it and his brutal honesty that made me laugh out loud.
The one thing that the landing incident made me do is significantly change my goals for the trip. Before I began traveling I decided that I wanted to catch a yellow fin tuna over 40 pounds, a 20+ pound dorado, and a wahoo of any size, but after I incident I just wanted to travel there and back safely. It's amazing how fast a slight brush with the Grim Reaper with correctly realign your priorities.
I didn't include a striped marlin or a marlin of any kind for that matter on my original list of fish I wanted to catch because of a previous bad experience. I once spent what seemed like the longest day of my life on a 38 foot Bertram off of Grand Cayman Island trolling huge marlin teasers around in marlin empty seas. It was truly one of the most boring fishing days I've ever spent on the water. To make matters worse it was made very frustrating too when the captain proceeded to troll his marlin teasers through a school of skipjack tuna that were crashing bait all over the surface for as far as the eye could see! Radio reports from other captains had to school of skipjack at 10 miles long! I had brought a 10 weight rod rigged and ready exactly for this scenario, but the captain just laughed when I asked for him to stop so I could fish. He was obviously inexperience with fly fisherman because he just kept shaking his head and saying in a jovial way that these fish wouldn't eat my flies. He may have been right, but I would have loved to at least cast to these fish. Fish is at its highest level when you can cast direct to your quarry. I was left pacing around the deck just watching the skipjack have their way with the bait. That the poor experience jaded me toward trolling for scarce fish. I would have much rather cast to the skipjack all day long and not caught any than troll for marlin in a seemingly empty marlin sea.
The remainder of the journey to San Diego was easy and uneventful. I was a little worried about how much I going to have to pay to take a cab solo from the San Diego Airport to Fisherman's Landing. My uneasiness grew when I asked to the cab driver to take me there and he had no idea where Fisherman's Landing was. Although, he probably didn't understand English well because I had a hard time understanding his broken English through his thick Middle Eastern accent. I had visions of being driven around in circles for hours only to arrive back at the airport. He finally discovered from the office that Fisherman's Landing was only a little more than a mile from the airport. With tip the cab ride was less than a $7. In a pinch or if I didn't have 60 pounds of luggage I could have probably walked from the airport to the Landing in no less than 15 minutes.
After arriving at Fisherman's Landing I walked across the street with my luggage and checked in at the Comfort Inn. After checking in to my hotel I met up with trip co-host John Hertzberg and the other two fly fisherman, Jim Sonn and Tony Snow, that were traveling down to the fishing grounds aboard the Shogun. The other 15 passengers were not riding down in the boat instead they all opted to meet the boat in the quite coastal Mexican town of San Carlos. Boarding the boat in San Carlos not San Diego eliminates a three day 600 mile boat ride down the Baja coast and serves to maximize the fishing time on the boat, which is why most of the experienced long range fisherman opted not to ride the boat down. For me, I wanted the entire experience because I wasn't likely to do this trip again for a while.
The Shogun departed the dock a little after 2 pm on New Year's Eve after crew cleaned and fuel the boat. The boat had just returned from a 5 day San Martin Island yellowtail and bottom fishing trip (which is along northern part of the Baja west coast) only hours before it was turned around. After a brief stop at the San Diego bait pens to replenish the live bait wells back to their capacity of 400 scoops of sardines, we left the San Diego harbor and turned south toward our destination- 'The Ridge' a series of banks or shallow spots that starts about 600 nautical miles (nm) south of San Diego and runs about 200 nm all the way down to Cabo San Lucas. In a few days the fishing was to begin.
For me the sense of adventure set immediately because everything is different about this experience - the boats, the coast line, the people, and even the style of fishing. One of coolest things that I noticed was that over the first 4 to 6 hours of travel the broadcast television signal which had been excellent at the dock slowly faded to complete snow, which drove home the point that were headed far away from civilization. You may have already guessed that cell phones were also of no use after about the first hour underway.