July 5, 2009
Anglers –
It is not unusual for the start of the summer season to be associated with strong southern winds, this year was no exception, in fact the winds were more persistent than in recent memory. Starting last Thursday evening and continuing to blow through the weekend and until the first day of July when conditions started to settle down some, though they still have not completely stabilized. These winds have pushed in cooler Pacific air and water currents and created green water conditions. At this time warmer blue water of 80 degrees is found 12 or more miles offshore, except near Los Frailes where the clean warm current reaches near shore. The air temperature has been pleasantly cool for this time of year, lower 80s, but this weather pattern has not helped the fishing action much and we are patiently waiting for conditions to get back on track for the summer season.
While dealing with limited options many charter skippers were finding respectable inshore action in more protected waters for a mix of sierra, roosterfish, pargo, pompano, amberjack, jack crevalle and other species, using various baits, Rapalas and yo-yo jigs. The live bait situation has been limited to mullet, some caballito and very small sized sardinas. The offshore fishing grounds have been holding schools of bolito and skipjack, which are being used for trolling and drift fishing. The Gordo Banks are showing more signs of activity for various gamefish in recent days, no significant numbers of fish, but the fish that are being accounted for are of quality size, including dorado to 40 pounds, amberjack to 70 pounds, dogtooth snapper to 50 pounds and one yellowfin tuna to 140 pounds. Other big tuna have been hooked into, but so far few have been landed. At least this is encouraging that the larger yellowfin are making a presence on the Banks, it is that time of year, we are expecting action to bust loose soon as conditions become more favorable.
Starting on Saturday morning the conditions improved, wind laid completely down. The local panga charters found very good action on the San Luis Bank for huchinango (red snapper) that were found schooling on the surface feeding on small jelly fish, early in the day these 8 to 14 pound snapper did strike well on yo-yo style jigs, anglers that were on this spot accounted for up to ten nice snapper. Below the snapper were the always aggressive Mexican bonito, weighing up to 8 pounds and striking on the same style of iron jigs. And below these huachinango and bonito were larger amberjack up to 30 pounds, with charters landing as many as a half dozen of these powerful fighters and excellent eating jacks mixed in their overall catch.
A local La Playita panguero with his son went out to the Inner Gordo Bank Saturday morning and were trolling a live bolito off the south side of the bank when they hooked into a large yellowfin tuna, after fighting the fish for several hours they had it close to the boat, but the tuna went back down towards the bottom and nearly spooled them on their 80 pound outfit, they were using a 130 pound leader, after another couple of exhausting hours without the use of a fighting harness they were able to finally get the beast to gaff, estimated weight of the yellowfin was 280 pounds. We do expect the action to break wide open in the coming days, as the weather has settled down and the warm clean current moving closer to shore, also with the large concentrations of bolito and smaller skipjack schooling on the fishing grounds this will surely attract more cow sized yellowfin tuna, bull dorado and of course the black and blue marlin will be lurking in the vicinity as well.
Lots of striped marlin in the same areas, but they have not been too aggressive at striking baits or lures in recent days. This is the time of year that sailfish, black and blue marlin will start to move into local waters, as they follow the warmer currents and their food supply into this region for the summer season.
The combined panga fleets out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 70 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 3 striped marlin, 9 yellowfin tuna, 13 dorado, 3 yellowtail, 18 amberjack, 19 pompano, 8 dogtooth snapper, 53 yellow snapper, 32 huachinango (red snapper), 21 sierra, 8 hammerhead shark, 8 jack crevalle and 24 roosterfish (released).
Good fishing, Eric
