The need for strengthening fishers' adaptive capacity has been proposed in the literature as an important component of effective fisheries governance arrangements in the presence of rising numbers of external drivers of change. Within the context of small-scale fisheries, government subsidies have been the main tool used for increasing adaptive capacity. We examine the relationship among adaptive capacity, subsidy programs, and fishers' participation in fisheries management, as a potentially important mediating factor affecting outcomes using a data set from two periods of a fishing community in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our results show a correlation between those fishers with access to decision-making venues and their reception of subsidies, yet the effect of participation and subsidies on fishers' adaptive capacity is limited. This appears to be due to the authorities' lack of commitment to strengthening fishers' adaptive capacity through subsidies programs, and fishers' lack of trust in the governance processes.