SPORTS WEEKEND : THE OUTDOORS / PETE THOMAS : Cannon Biography Turns Back the Pages of Baja’s Golden Age

Are you among the seemingly growing number of Baja travelers disenchanted with events south of the border?

You witnessed the Americanization of Cabo San Lucas years ago. More recently, you became alarmed when a crime wave swept through and around San Quintin and by the suspicious murder of two tourists in nearby El Rosario, reportedly by a known drug dealer now doing time for the crime in an Ensenada prison.

You fume over today’s sky-high gas prices and curse the rip-offs who have been caught rigging pumps in their favor.

Now there’s the 150-peso tourist fee you must pay if you wish to travel beyond Ensenada, and at $16 or so it isn’t much, but if you’re driving down, the confusing manner in which you’re being asked to pay has you shaking your head in disbelief.

You’re not ready to kiss off Baja, but you long for the good old days, before progress cast those dark clouds over your sunny paradise.

Well, you can return to those glory days, when there were millions of willing game fish and no transpeninsular highway or commercial airport, both of which ensured a measure of prosperity for some of the locals, but opened the floodgates of change.

You’ll have to do this vicariously, of course, and San Diego author Gene Kira offers the perfect vehicle: His latest Baja-related work, “The Unforgettable Sea of Cortez,” centers on the life and writings of the late Ray Cannon, who traveled Baja extensively from 1947 to 1977, writing weekly columns for Western Outdoor News.

Kira refers to this period as the “Golden Age of Baja California,” and it certainly comes through as such in the coffee table hard-cover (Torrance-based Cortez Publications, $39.95).

Kira not only introduces Cannon and his flamboyant writing style to a new generation of Baja aficionados, but through dozens of previously unpublished photos, field notes and manuscripts borrowed from Cannon’s longtime girlfriend, actress Carla Laemmle, he also paints a lasting picture of Baja’s colorful past.

Cannon was a self-proclaimed “riches-to-rags” story, a successful actor and producer who burned out on Hollywood when he was 55. He was reborn as a vagabond columnist, earning peanuts but enjoying a rugged lifestyle he came to cherish.

He first visited Baja in 1947 on an invitation to fish the northern Sea of Cortez out of San Felipe, and massive schools of enormous totuava (relatives of white seabass), giant grouper, snapper and cabrilla left him spellbound.

“I have a special attachment to the north end,” he later wrote, “since it was there that I experienced a single, adventure-packed day that changed the whole course of my life.

“It was a day so filled with excitement and enchantment that it caused me to shed my lifetime career and become a vagabundo del mar--a vagabond of the sea. . . .”

In 1956 he was assigned to cover Baja for Western Outdoor News, to which he informed his readers, “My editor has just sentenced me to Paradise. I don’t mean the hereafter world--but to a heaven on this earth, and I mean literally. He has assigned me to write about Baja and that wondrous Sea of Cortez.”

Cannon was on hand when southern Baja’s first hotels sprang up amid the cactus: Abelardo Lopez’s Rancho Las Cruces, Ed Tabor’s Flying Sportsmen Lodge, Herb Tansey’s Rancho Buena Vista and Luis Coppola’s Los Arcos.

These were fly-in lodges established largely by World War II-era pilots who realized Baja’s potential, what with its sunbaked shores and a sparkling blue and bountiful sea.

They flew Cannon in and through his columns and also through his own hard-cover, Sunset Books’ “The Sea of Cortez,” he helped fill their rooms.

“Of all my discoveries in and around this enchanting Sea,” he wrote, “I believe you will agree that the most important was in finding the elusive fountain of fun.

“I found it permeating the lands and the waters everywhere, over thousands of unused miles. These immense, empty regions with their vast natural abundances need people to enjoy them, while in the United States, there are thousands of weary, tension-ridden people who desperately need the Cortez and the respite it offers.”

Yes, Cannon often got carried away with both pen and camera. (One hotel owner said the columnist once had him spend more than an hour tossing a dead dorado into the air so Cannon could get the perfect shot of one of these leaping fighters.)

But Cannon saw himself as more of an entertainer than a journalist, and one of the most entertaining stories he told was of “the Snook that shook Mulege,” a long-winded account of a nighttime encounter with an especially large snook he and his guides had harpooned.

“The still night was shattered by the splashing, our yelling, and the echoes bouncing from hill to hill,” Cannon wrote. “Fishermen and their families came pouring out of the nearby camp to the river bank to join in the uproar.

“They boomed out their advice, out-cussing the spearman in razzing, hog-calling tones. This hullabaloo in the middle of the night triggered a chain reaction among the town’s dogs, which were quick to join in.

“Their yelps and howls caused other creatures to sound off. Pigs squealed, turkeys gobbled, chickens cackled, all in frantic alarm. Jackasses and burros brayed, horses whinnied, and a multitude of coyotes and wild birds added their bit.

“On penitentiary hill, the single night guard was awakened by the terrifying clamor. He switched on all the prison floodlights and grabbed his conch horn to bugle out the full guard.

“That did it! The citizenry panicked! Not since the revolution had such a night disturbance occurred. Having no phones to call the police, and no police to call--there was only one thing to do--head for the hills! And that’s exactly what they did.”

The story goes on, eventually culminating with the capture of a black snook “measuring 5 feet 7 inches from snout to tail fork.”

Cannon kept this type of writing up until cancer got the better of him in 1977, four years after the completion of Mexico Highway 1, the same year the airport at San Jose del Cabo opened.

The “Pied Piper of Baja California” wrote more than a thousand columns and magazine articles based on his experiences on and beyond the desert peninsula.

And not one of them dealt with crime or corruption.

SALTWATER

* Albacore score: A long albacore season shows no signs of slowing. Overnight boats running from Long Beach to San Diego were all on schools of fish Thursday and scores of 100 or more were not uncommon. What San Diego has in its favor is access to schools of bluefin weighing up to about 50 pounds.

What’s also interesting is that yellowfin and dorado are slowly moving north, so if the westerly winds ever stop and the surface temperatures rise, there could be a changing of the guard. The warm-water exotics are being caught as close as 100 miles south of San Diego, but the biggest concentration remains well south of that.

* Cabo San Lucas/East Cape: The news is all good: A 600-pound blue marlin was caught off Land’s End, where the most unusual catch was that of a 70-pound short-bill spearfish. Bigger dorado have moved into the Cabo area, but there are more dorado at the East Cape. An Englishman last week caught 38 in one day on a fly rod. Victor’s Fleet in San Jose reports a 500-pound black marlin and a 275-pound yellowfin tuna (after a three-hour fight), both landed aboard pangas.

FRESHWATER

Phase II of a court-ordered plan to restore the Silverwood Lake bass fishery to pre-construction levels of 1995, when a two-year draw-down for earthquake retrofitting significantly reduced bass numbers, began this week.

More than 300 habitat structures made out of lemon-tree branches have been placed in the San Bernardino County reservoir. No, it won’t improve the flavor of the fish, but it will give them places to hide.

Phase I, removing less desirable species, is still underway. The final phase, the stocking of thousands of bass, will take place this month and next.

WINDING UP

Their numbers were down, what with the dove opener falling on a Wednesday, but hunters’ success rate was up, as expected.

“They were coming in with [10-bird] limits of mostly white-wing as early as 7 a.m.,” said Liz Waymire at B&B; Bait in Blythe.

Waymire remarked that those who didn’t show missed out on one of the most beautiful days for an opener in years. “It wasn’t even 100 degrees,” she said.

The first half of the season runs through Sept. 15. The second half runs Nov. 13-Dec. 27.