Ensenada Marlin Madness: El Niño 2026 Turns Northern Baja Into a Banner Year
I have been coming to Ensenada my whole life. I cannot remember a marlin bite like this.
Not “pretty good for Ensenada.” Not “we got lucky and found one.” This is a banner year. The last week has been absolutely incredible. This morning the pangas — those smaller, hard-working boats that make this fleet what it is — are catching striped marlin and blue marlin. There have been days when boats have two and three marlin hooked at the same time. That is Cabo talk. That is Mag Bay talk. That is not the sentence you usually write about northern Baja.
Look at the photo. Two stripers laid out next to a blue. The stripers look tiny. That is how good it is.
This is what El Niño 2026 does when it really leans in. Warm water pushes the whole lineup north. Dorado. Yellowfin. Skipjack. Wahoo. And the billfish follow the bait. Historically, the years that look like this on our coast are the big ones — 1983–84, 1997–98, and 2014–15. Old-timers still talk about 2015 as the best local marlin season in a generation. Blues and blacks showed up off Southern California. Channel Islands boats were releasing stripers by the dozen. Then it went quiet again. Ensenada has always had a summer-to-fall shot at striped marlin, with the occasional blue mixed in. What we are seeing now is that window blown wide open, and the pangas are in the middle of it.
The reports keep stacking.
Little Horse Sportfishing had a blue marlin yesterday.
Ramon Sportfishing — Leon Orozco — already had a striped marlin on the board this morning.
Capitana Yhara Nuñez of Lucky Sportfishing, Ensenada’s first female sportfishing captain, was out with the family fleet. They run several boats, including that beautiful six-pack Rapala. She put a striped marlin on deck that dwarfed her. If you have never fished with Yhara, you are missing one of the best stories in this harbor. Family business. Marina Ensenada on the Malecón. She will put you on fish and she will make you laugh the whole way home.
And then there is Popotla. That little fishing village about 15 minutes south of Rosarito. I have not independently verified this, so I will say it the way it came to me: several marlin were reported out of Popotla, and the word on the dock is they may be the first marlin ever caught from that village. If that holds up, it tells you how far this bite has stretched. Fish showing up where they are not supposed to show up.
That stretch is the whole story.
Our friend Jeff Lingle runs a yacht for the Department of War and takes VIPs fishing. He just caught and released a beautiful 275-pound blue marlin up by San Nicolas Island. That is way, way, way north of Ensenada. Same ocean. Same warm-water push. Around San Nic and Santa Barbara Island they are also into yellowfin tuna and skipjack. In front of Ensenada it is a mixed bag — skipjack, yellowfin, dorado, and several wahoo have been taken too. Newport just put a wahoo on a midday marlin troll this morning. The map is lighting up from the Channel Islands down through northern Baja.
This is not a one-spot miracle. This is El Niño 2026 drawing a line of fish from San Nicolas to Ensenada, and the Ensenada fleet is cashing it.
If you want in with Lucky Sportfishing and Capitana Yhara Nuñez:
Lucky Sportfishing Baja
Marina Ensenada / Malecón, Ensenada
Phone / WhatsApp: +52 646 255-6362
Also: +52 646 145-1990 • +52 646 246-2662
Email: mailto:info@luckysportfishingbaja.com
Web: http://luckysportfishingbaja.com
Ask about the Rapala six-pack
Check http://friedmanadventures.com for Captain’s audios, landing and boat counts, bait availability, Friedman Adventures AI, kids corner, and a whole lot more.
Still time to fish with us this Friday, September 18, on the Estella out of Hooks Landing in Oxnard — morning half-day AND evening twilight. Call (805) 382-6233 or go to http://hookslanding.net.
Northern Baja is having a year. The pangas are hooked up. The blues are in the mix. And the stripers look small next to them.
That is how you know it is special.
— Phil Friedman
Friedman Adventures
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