15 Days to Baja

And then there was that trip to Cabo…

Not too long ago, Tony took a trip to Los Cabos, Mexico.

“It was me, Mark Dupp — my tattoo artist fishing buddy — a film crew and some friends,” he said. “And Mark’s three-legged chihuahua.”

As unconventional as this bunch may seem, their mode of transportation was even less so.

“We got on a mothership in San Diego and cruised down along the coast, all the way to Cabo,” Tony says.

Tony and his crew took their time on the 15-day adventure.

“All the way down, we would stop off at these little spots and see what we could find,” he says. “We saw everything: sperm whales, blue marlin, white marlin, wahoo, mahi.”

On the journey, Tony had the chance to see a few things that even he hadn’t seen before.

“We made a stop at Mag[dalena] Bay, and there was this tiny estuary coming into a cove of overgrown mangroves, and it was teeming with snook,” he says. That was the first time I’d ever seen a Pacific snook — it was so cool!”

At one point the crew encountered a large, floating patch of kelp.

“I guess on the West Coast, they calm them kelp paddies,” Tony says. “The kelp attracts all sorts of bait fish, which of course, brings in the bigger fish to eat them.”

This particular kelp paddy was different.

“It was surrounded by a bunch of mola mola [ocean sunfish],” he says. “So, I got in my suit and went in to see if I could get some shots.”

The ship’s crew, who had a lot of experience on the water in that part of the Pacific had never seen such a large concentration of these floating giants.

“Nobody had ever seen this many molas in one place before,” Tony says. “They were just little guys, but there were a bunch — maybe a dozen — of them.”

Mola molas are the world’s largest bony — as opposed to cartilaginous — fish. These pelagic leviathans can reach lengths of 11 feet and weigh as much as 3,000 pounds.

“I didn’t get to see any super big molas on that kelp paddy,” Tony says. “But it was cool to swim with the ones that were.”

Along the way, they encountered huge pods of dolphins and were treated to one gorgeous sunset after another.

“Being on the boat was just awesome,” Tony says. “I was getting lots of great shots, Dupp was hardcore fishing. Everybody was having a good time.”

Once they got to Cabo, Tony and company spent a few days there.

“I hung out with the seals, we did some offshore fishing and just had a crazy time,” he says. “It was a blast.”