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LOS CABOS MAGAZINE - Issue 8
| Fishing - Not Just a Man’s Sport By Karen Trapane and Randy Turner - Article from Los Cabos Magazine - Issue #8 |
| Cabo San Lucas has long been recognized as one of the top destinations in the world for big game fishing. Beginning in the 1950’s, affluent anglers from around the world targeted Los Cabos for the abundance of billfish that inhabit the fertile waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. This was a sport that was dominated by men, and in the early days few women accompanied the fishermen on their adventures to Baja. This situation is changing as women anglers are starting to realize that battling fish that can weigh in excess of 500 pounds is not only possible, but to the chagrin of male anglers, they are often able to do a better job. Tracy Ehrenberg is the General Manager of Pisces Fleet, based in Cabo San Lucas, and a female angler. She laughs when she explains how people frequently mistake her for a man due to her unisex name. “People assume I’m male until they speak with me; then they can’t believe I’m a woman,” she laughs in her English accent. The irony is that she is as feminine and petite as they come. Tracy certainly knows her stuff but it’s taken her years to earn respect from “the guys”. Her office is cluttered with fishing equipment, pictures of her family, friends and, of course, her catches. She’s been fishing for about 20 years and took the fleet over from her husband thirteen years ago. She has grown the fleet from three boats to sixteen boats ranging in size from 28’ to 86’. The Pisces Fleet has won many environmental awards because they concentrate on catch and release but, she says, “...it is still the anglers decision.” Tracy reports that the number of female anglers has increased a lot in the last few years. They are better an-glers than men in her opinion because “...they learn more quickly and they have to rely on technique, not brut strength,” she explains. Fishing is not only a sport for men anymore; it’s fun for the whole family. Minerva Smith and her husband Bob arrived in Cabo San Lucas in 1975 and started running sportfishing charters. The realized early on that the wide variety of species in the waters of Los Cabos offered angler’s the ability to fulfill their sportfishing dreams. They later opened Minerva’s Baja Tackle, which is now a landmark for Baja anglers. When the topic of women and the sport of fishing was brought up, Minerva was the lady to speak with. She stated that in the beginning of the fishing scene in Cabo there were very few women anglers but things have certainly changed. Women started fishing with their husbands, fathers, and boyfriends rather than waiting on the beach. They discovered that size and strength are not the most important part of catching a fish that can weigh many times that of the angler. According to Minerva and other anglers in the know, women make excellent big game anglers due to the fact that they use finesse in battling these behemoths of the deep instead of brute strength. Sound familiar? To validate the points of both Minerva and Tracy, we interviewed two renowned female anglers who have proven that women do indeed have what it takes. Judy Passarello gives women a lot of credit. When she was three years old, her mother held her down with her feet while she caught her first fish. “Even if it’s your first Marlin, I feel it is more of a thrill to watch it swim away than to see it hanging on the scales,” says Passarello in an interview with Western Outdoor News. She’s been an avid supporter of Catch and Release dating back to 1974! Judy, beaming with pride, showed us her rods and tournament trophies, and told us that her favorite place to fish is in Cabo San Lucas. She started fishing in the area back in 1975 and remembers flying into the dirt airstrip, “You knew you were in Cabo when you saw the dust clouds of the taxis coming…” she chuckled. Throughout the 1980s, Judy would spend 3–4 days every other month in Cabo and generally would catch 9–10 marlin per day! While she still fishes all over the world, Judy’s interests are numerous. She also golfs and hunts (we’ll have to broach those “made for men” sports another time)! Marsha Bierman is one of the most widely known and respected female big game anglers in the world. Marsha holds numerous IGFA world records and is a strong proponent of women anglers who challenge the giants of the deep. When asked about women in big game fishing Marsha stated that women make wonderful anglers. “We listen to instructions, ask questions a guy would never ask, then we follow those instructions; and most important perhaps, we realize we aren’t going to muscle the fish; so we use finesse instead of might. The end result is we do not wear ourselves out showing someone how tough we are, we conserve our energy for when it is really needed. Many times we wind up catching the fish faster than our male counterparts. Generally, the male philosophy in big game fishing has always been to use heavy tackle that requires brute force just to carry it around the cockpit and get it to the fighting chair. I discovered a long time ago that I could catch all the same fish using lighter tackle, (I never use anything heavier than 50-pound test) and can honestly say that of all the fish I have caught on stand up tackle (over 2,000 billfish), less than one percent has taken me longer than a half hour to land, with the average being closer to fifteen minutes. Technique, finesse, pacing, good aerobic condition, and a willingness to listen, all add up to a successful angler. The truly wonderful thing about big game fishing is that there are no handicaps and no spotting of points when women fish against men. We meet on an even playing field and can compete as equals. There are not many sports that I can think of where that is the case.” While both Judy and Marsha have participated in many tournaments and won many titles between them, they say that women still don’t participate enough to keep most of the women’s tournaments going. But you don’t have to enter a tournament to go fishing with your family or your girlfriends. All you need is the interest and a willingness to learn. With the first buzz of the pre-dawn alarm, you open your eyes just enough to secretly watch your husband crawl out of bed to get ready for his big day of fishing. You laugh to yourself because what he doesn’t know is that you’ll be going with him. You pretend you’re still asleep and try to contain your excitement. It is early evening and you and your daughter are seated at the kitchen table waiting patiently. Your husband humbly dons your pink ruffled apron and you both unsuccessfully suppress giggles. He looks over at us with a feigned injured look on his face and proclaims, “would you like your dorado baked or grilled?” Not only had we won our friendly wager, we had managed to bring in the largest catch of the day (thanks to the excellent advice of our female cohort). |
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Last revision: 28 October 2002