The funniest thing I have ever seen fishing or around a fishing camp, occurred at Rocky Point. My first time to fish down there, early in the morning, Jim Buck and I, launched my big tri hull off of the launch ramp just like anywhere else. The proprietor of the camp told us in broken English that in afternoon when we returned the tide would be out, but don’t worry, just be sure to call him on the ship to shore radio and let him know when we would be back.

We caught a mess of fish; pintos (small groupers), rock bass and queen triggers and returning to the camp, called the proprietor as he had instructed. In broken English, he replied, “Beeg, wide Texas boat? OK, we get jur trailer and be ready for ju.” Breaking the connection, I asked Jim, “Get our trailer. What’s going on.” “Quien Sabe?” he replied in broken Spanish.

Nearing shore, I thought I was seeing things! In the water, there was a John Deere tractor coming our way. The closer we got to it, the more stranger it looked. I quipped to Jim, “Looks Like a John Deere tractor to me!” What I saw was a tractor body, diesel engine and all, built up on fifteen foot extensions, with wheels below the extensions rolling on the sandy bottom and the drive shaft pointing down to the rear wheels at a forty five degree angle. Out came this contraption to tow us into the ramp area and since the tide was out the ramp area was all on dry land.

Our trailer was waiting for us two hundred yards out from the launch ramp, hooked up to another tractor/contraption, rear wheels into the water just below the bearing buddies and a Mexican boy standing on the rear of the trailer, dwarfed by the strange looking vehicles. We secured a rope to our John Deere and it chugged up to our trailer, we untied from it, threw the line to the boy on the back of the trailer, he pulled us up to our winch and hooked us to the winch and the second tractor/contraption, we never found out the brand, it didn’t have a body, just engine, chugged us back up to the launch ramp and on to our car. We hopped out of the boat, backed the car up to the trailer and hooked up.

Walking up to the proprietor, I asked him, “How much?” “Two dollar,” he replied. I would have paid ten for that show. Driving back to our campground I remarked to Jim, “I wonder how they figured those tractor contraptions out.” “Quien sabe,” he replied in broken Spanish.

There is more than one way to skin a Deere.

After sampling the wonderful off shore fishing out of Mazatlan, by the spring of 1972, I had found another salt water fishing paradise, “South of the Border, Down Mexico Way”. The upper end of El Golfo, the Gulf of California, the final destination of the western Colorado River, the same river that roars through the Grand Canyon, meekly trickles into the top end of El Golfo at San Felipe, Mexico. Sixty miles southeast of San Felipe is Puerto Penasco, or Rocky Point, as the local Arizonans called it.

Yes, local Arizonans. At the time, because of the outstanding fishing and relaxing available, about a hundred families had established an American colony there. The beach houses were minimum standard, but sufficient for occasional use by their lessors. Back then Gringos couldn’t own property in Mexico, so I chose to set up my tent and camp on the deserted beaches. The two best facilities at Rocky Point were the boat storage area, patrolled by the local police and fenced with concertina wire and the boat launching equipment.

My boat, at the time, was an eighteen foot, tri hull, with two, sixty horse outboards and two internal, twenty four gallon gas tanks, or as the locals called it “Beeg Texas Boat”. Loaded out it would cruise at twenty-five miles per hour and had a range of over sixty miles. We caught some very nice fish, sea bass, grouper, corvina, snook, bonefish and queen trigger fish. I won a category of a tournament there in 1973 with a ten pound, trigger fish and once saw, and came within twenty feet ,of a fifty foot, whale!

An unusual feature of Rocky Point is the extreme tidal fluctuation caused by its location at the top of El Golfo, which is several hundred miles long and for a large body of water, very narrow, fifty to a hundred miles wide. Tidal pressure going in and out causes wide fluctuations at Rocky Point. I was told the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Scotia, is the only spot in the world with greater tidal fluctuation.