La Playa: Fishing Promised Land

Bill Sorenson was standing on the beach, sweltering under the noonday sun, watching the fishing boats come in.

He knew many of the Mexican skippers and they acknowledged his presence with a smile or a handshake. He also knew some of the passengers. They greeted him the same way.

Sorenson, it turns out, is credited with popularizing the fleet of pangas commonly referred to as La Playita Fleet.

It is believed to be the oldest fleet in Los Cabos, a region that includes Cabo San Lucas as well as San Jose. The people of La Playa, a small fishing village just east of San Jose, had been fishing the area commercially since before the turn of the century.

When Sorenson first visited southern Baja California, in the early 1960s, he fell in love with the people, the climate and, especially, the fishing.

He eventually retired here, made friends with the fishermen, and became sort of an ambassador for the fleet. He spread the word north of the border of a charming little fleet practically within casting distance of some of the most productive fishing grounds in the world, the Gordo Banks.

The fishermen soon realized that they could do better catering to the angling tourist than they could selling their fish on the local market, and today that’s what they specialize in. Still, not many people know about La Playita. To get to the beach from which the pangas work, one has to take a taxi on a dirt road a mile or two out of town.

But from there it’s only a short boat ride to the Gordo Banks.

“What’s special about this place is its location,” Sorenson said, pointing to the shimmering Sea of Cortez. “All this area is banks and reefs, so in the spring the fish come up from South America and work this way as the water warms.”

Sorenson, 81, doesn’t get out much anymore but was asked recently by a reporter to share some of his experiences since moving here.

He declined, sort of.

“It’s all in the book,” he said. “I can’t tell you anything about me or this fleet that’s not in the book.”

He picked up a copy of a small, self-published book entitled, “Siempre Manana” (“Always Tomorrow”). He signed it, “Siempre su amigo” (“Always your friend”), handed it over and went back to greeting people on the beach.

“Siempre Manana,” despite a few typographical errors and misspelled words, is an entertaining, well-researched and informative autobiography, which covers everything from Sorenson’s birth in the cattle-ranching town of Aurora, Utah, to his growing up and becoming a Los Angeles theater manager, to his retirement to this sun-drenched portion of the Baja peninsula, an area many tourists consider the land of marlin and margaritas.

Sorenson’s feelings are a little deeper. His book offers not only a history of the region from the days when the missionaries and pirates came in the early 1700s, but insights on the people who live here and their customs, which are far different than those of most tourists.

Respect for local customs, he wrote, “will open every door for you in Mexico.”

He learned that the hard way.

“In all my years of driving in Baja, I have never been stalled along the highway without an offer of assistance,” he wrote. “[But] one journey didn’t turn out so favorably. I was showing some of my clients the back country of San Jose and visited a little village that the 20th Century had not touched.

“An old woman was leading a burro. It was loaded with firewood and a small boy sat on its rump behind the bundle. The tourist jumped out of the car and took his picture. The woman started cursing and chasing him with her walking stick. She made a determined effort to destroy the camera because she still believed in the old superstition that a picture stole part of the soul.”

The 20th Century has indeed touched San Jose proper--satellite dishes are visible at even some of the humblest of dwellings. But long-standing values are still cherished and respected throughout Baja. And a strong sense of family pride is as evident as ever.

Sorenson recalled the time friends were camping while en route here from Los Angeles:

“They met a man, his wife and a pretty young daughter. The girl was dressed in a clean but the most tattered dress you could imagine. We always bring a supply of clothes for my friends when we come to San Jose so they asked if they could give the daughter some things. They were able to fit her out in fine style. They were thanked profusely. They bedded down for the night.

“At first light the father was back with the saddest, scrubby-looking chicken in Baja. They accepted it like it was the American Eagle. After they left they were told that he had walked 10 miles to his rancho and paid them with the only thing he had of value.”

It isn’t until halfway through the book that Sorenson gets into the fishing at and around the Gordo Banks.

The skippers of La Playita Fleet all are descendants of fishermen who grew up on the water, Sorenson said, and none are better.

“They know the ocean floor and reef locations like you know your living room,” he wrote. “Favorite fishing spots are located by shore-triangulation [using specific landmarks]. Any skipper can run five miles offshore and anchor exactly on an underwater rock not much bigger than his panga.”

Sorenson covers the fish of the region, advising on how and when to catch each, spinning yarns about some of the battles he has experienced or witnessed over the years.

In one of his more descriptive accounts, he recalls a classic battle with a marlin hooked at the inner Gordo:

“There were five of us in the boat that morning, the captain, two deckhands, a client and myself. The fisherman awarded the first strike of the day was a man 55 years old and badly out of shape. We were in the inside Gordo and drift fishing with live mackerel. When the captain saw the line moving out slowly, he grabbed the rod and set the hook several times with all of his strength.

“Next was a sight I will never forget. This giant fish erupted from the water like a broaching missile. . . . The boat was racing after him to prevent being spooled. Our fisherman was in a state of shock. . . .

“The client would not accept help and after three hours collapsed. We took turns hour after hour but we could never force [the marlin] close enough for a shot with the harpoon. The battle began at 6:15 a.m. and the line broke at 7:30 p.m.; an epic struggle of 13 hours and no cigar.

“The customer was put to bed and not able to fish again for two days. Experts who examined a photo of the marlin estimate him from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds, and he gains more every time I tell it.”

Sorenson claims to have seen sailfish stab anglers with their bills, and wahoo jump into boats and put the bite on their captors. And once, he says, he saw a school of dorado so large it “turned the water yellow for 100 yards in all directions.”

He wasn’t fishing on this particular day, a successful one considering the number of wahoo and tuna being unloaded from the pangas.

But he wasn’t going anywhere. And he would be the first to tell you, “There’s always tomorrow.”