Angler's Eden

Few tourists ever stray very far south of the California border into the long, desertlike Mexican peninsula called Baja California. Below Tijuana, where the Mexican fleshpots generally attract only servicemen, there is scarcely anything to see save for a scattering of native villages and trails. And yet, along the southernmost 100 miles of Baja, between La Paz and Cabo San Lucas (see map), is the best game-fishing ground in the hemisphere--perhaps, as some fishermen claim, in the whole world.

Centerpiece of the area is a tile-roofed Spanish-colonial building set in a grove of coconut trees and facing on a gleaming white beach, 22 miles east of La Paz.

Once the Hotel Rancho Las Cruces, it is now a private club with a list of eminent patrons. Dwight Eisenhower was there recently as the guest of Charles Jones, president of the Richfield Oil Co. W. Alton Jones, executive-committee chairman of Cities Service Co., was on his way to meet Ike there when he died in the plane crash at Idlewild with $62,690 in his pockets.

Bing Crosby is a member, and so are Bob Hope and Restaurateur Victor (Trader Vic's) Bergeron. Membership is limited to 100, costs $300 for initiation, $360 a year.

The main building and cottages can house about 40 at a time, but some members, like Crosby, are building houses nearby.

Fish Trap. As such resorts go, Las Cruces is not expensive. What keeps it the preserve of the very rich is its location. A private plane or, failing that, a power cruiser, is the only way to get there with any semblance of convenience. There are nearly always four or five planes parked on the dirt runway, and on one occasion, the number reached 17.

There is little to do there except fish, but the fishing is almost incredible. The narrow gulf between the east coast of the peninsula and the western shore of Mexico itself is a great natural trap for billions of game fish that are swept into the area by Pacific currents. The place teems with black, blue and striped marlin, tuna, swordfish. cabrilla, barracuda, yellowtail, bonito, dolphin and roosterfish.

The marlin, particularly, are as easy to take as the warm sun. What's more, they are on hand ten months a year. The legal catch is one per person, or three per boat each day, and just about the only way to avoid a strike is to neglect to set a line.

That is precisely how Ike went home emptyhanded; he had a slight cold and so never did get to wet a line. Crosby, a self-styled "nut" on light tackle, likes to use a 10-lb. line; last week he caught a fine striped marlin (they run from 115 lbs. to 190 lbs.) this way, though most of his catches are dolphin, roosterfish and other fighters in the 25-to 40-lb. range.

With two boats--a 55-ft. motor cruiser and a 23-ft. inboard runabout--he keeps busy on the water for three or four hours a day.

The Intruders. Crosby, Eisenhower & Co. may soon be sharing the water with less affluent but equally eager sportsmen.

Already, other beachside hotels--naturally, with landing strips big enough for private planes--have opened farther down the coast. Most ambitious is the 60-suite, $1,000,000 Hotel Cabo San Lucas, near the village of the same name, whose stockholders include such enthusiasts as Kirk Douglas, Airplane Maker Donald Douglas Sr. and Barren Hilton, son of Hotelman Conrad. Heretofore, the only way an ordinary traveler could get to lower Baja has been by commercial flight or road from Los Angeles to San Diego, where he had to cross the border to Tijuana, then take a three-flights-a-week plane to La Paz, and from there fly to the hotel landing strips by chartered plane. But Mexico's Aeronaves Airlines hopes to run flights to La Paz direct from Los Angeles after June 1.

Many of the oldtimers are already cringing at the thought, are talking of moving on to other secret fishing grounds. Says Hamilton Skelly, a Riverside, Calif., businessman (citrus) who has been idyling at Baja for several years: ''I hate to think about it.''

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