October 12, 2009
Anglers –
The past several weeks brought ample rainfall to the area, turning the parched Southern Baja desert landscape into lush tropical green vegetation. Tourists are arriving in steadily increasing numbers and they are enjoying the arrival of fall weather, with plenty of warm sunshine, but not too stifling, highs are ranging in the upper 80s. Wind patterns are shifting towards the typical fall pattern from the north, with moderate breezes of 8 to 12 mph. Early in the week there was south wind which stirred up water conditions, this also coincided with the full moon phase, both of these factors contributed to slower fishing action for a few days.
As the conditions improved towards the later part of the week, the all around action resulted in higher fish counts. Sunday morning the weather was threatening once again, though charters did venture out and were able to get into some quality fishing action early in the day, particularly close to shore near Santa Maria, but on and off thunder showers soaked anglers and boats were forced to return to the docks by 11 a.m. This weather disturbance were associated with the outer bands of newly formed Tropical Storm Patricia, which is now lurking over three hundred miles to the south of Cabo San Lucas, but is following a course that is predicted to take it in the direction of the Southern Baja. This is unfortunate that the adverse weather coincides with increased crowds of anglers and charter fleets are looking at shutting down operations for at least several days.
Live sardinas were plentiful in the vicinity of the Puerto los Cabos Marina Jetties, though these baitfish were of smaller size in recent days. Water temperatures throughout the region ranged from 80 to 85 degrees.
The inshore action off of Santa Maria had come to a standstill due to greener water conditions and local panga fleets were making the longer distance run north towards Iman, San Luis and Vinorama to find more consistent action. There was an area near San Luis within one mile of shore where wahoo were striking trolled lures, particularly the Rapala type plugs. Anglers concentrating their efforts for these speedsters reported catching an average of one, two or three wahoo up to 40 pounds, while also having other missed strikes.
Dorado counts also improved, they were striking a variety of medium sized lures and once found by trolling the schools could be brought close to the boat by chumming with sardinas. Most of the dorado landed in the direction of the Sea of Cortez were in the 8 to 15 pound class, while the dorado encountered on the Pacific were reportedly larger.
Yellowfin tuna became more scattered during the full moon, though they are still in the area, as some larger tuna were found traveling with pods of porpoise offshore and they were found mixed in with schools of black skipjack from the Iman Bank to Vinorama, these fish ranged from football size up to seventy pounds. The skipjack were a nuisance, as were the sea lions on certain days, but despite these negative factors there were some quality catches of yellowfin accounted for, but this action fluctuated from day to day, as to where and when the tuna would make a showing. Charters will start scouting out areas where the giant squid congregate and perhaps this might help improve counts of the tuna, last year at this same time the squid were plentiful and being used as strip bait for catching the larger grade of tuna.
Anglers using various whole and cut baits, as well as yo-yo jigs off of the rocky high spots accounted for a mixed bag of amberjack, cabrilla, huachinango, barred pargo, triggerfish, bonito and a few dog tooth snapper.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 58 charters for the week, with anglers accounted for: 2 striped marlin, 4 sailfish, 22 wahoo, 112 dorado, 74 yellowfin tuna, 22 bonito, 110 black skipjack, 8 dogtooth snapper, 16 barred pargo, 14 huachinango (red snapper), 68 triggerfish,
11 amberjack and 8 cabrilla.
Good fishing, Eric
