We had a great day fishing with the crew of the Simpson. We booked the full day tour and were able to catch two striped marlin and one dorado. No one in our group is very experienced with sport fishing - two of us had caught marlin in Cabo before on a prior trip (different charter) and one of us had never done any fishing like this. Yet we all had a good time and a successful trip thanks to the hard work of the captain, Junior, and first mate, Jesus.

Jesus worked diligently to set up the lines, while Junior guided us to the best locations based on reports on the radio. Our group spoke minimal Spanish, but Junior was fluent in English which made communication easy. He also answered all our questions about how the lines were set up and what the strategy was. Once a fish was on, Junior kept the boat where it needed to be and gave instructions from the captain’s seat above. Meanwhile, Jesus helped get the reel in place for us and stood by to help as needed. The second marlin was a fighter and took over an hour for us to reel in! Along the way we saw whales, dolphins, and sea lions, including one sea lion that seemed entertained by us fighting with a marlin.

A few tips to make your trip go smoothly: Fishing licenses can be purchased on the dock for a little over $20 per person in cash (add 16% for card) or purchased online in advance. We also had to buy live bait before leaving, which was another $40 for the full day (fyi, we didn’t go through all the bait so you might be able to get away with half that). The captain expects you to pay the remaining balance according to the pesos balance, not USD, so watch out for the exchange rate. Using PayPal, to get to the pesos balance shown on FishingBooker was about $50 more than the USD balance shown on the booking. It might be cheaper if you can get a favorable exchange rate at a bank with cash. You will also have to provide your own food and drinks—these can be purchased from a little convenience store while the crew fills up the boat with gas. There’s also vendors on the dock in the morning selling burittos and coffee for the early morning start. If you want to process the fish to take home, dockhands will take your fish to the processing shack, then can arrange for it to be packaged, frozen, and delivered to your hotel. This can be pricy though. For one marlin and one dorado it came out to a little over $200, cash only.

All in all, it made for a good day, but we burned through more cash than we were expecting.