August 9, 2009
Anglers –
As we now start the month of August there are a pair of Tropical Storms that have developed to the south, named Enrique and Felicia, with the later being the more powerful hurricane and heading on a western path that may near the Hawaiian Island chain. Either way these storms will not impact the Baja Peninsula, except perhaps for increasing the humidity and cloud cover some. There was a very powerful 6.9 earthquake registered about 350 miles south of San Diego in the middle of the Sea of Cortez, but this jolt was not felt locally, nor did any known tidal waves develop. Ocean conditions have still been plagued by unpredictable winds, most of the time out of the south, this has resulted in varying currents and has caused water temperatures to vary from about 78 to 88 degrees. Lots of baitfish on the fishing grounds, bolito, skipjack, jurelito, flying fish and cocinero, the gamefish have had plenty to eat, perhaps too much, as anglers have had to work hard in order to catch an average of several fish per boat.
Though the numbers of fish actually caught have not been that impressive, there have been some quality catches accounted for, including sailfish, blue and striped marlin, yellowfin tuna, dorado, wahoo, grouper, amberjack, roosterfish, huchinango and dogtooth snapper. The fleets out of San Jose del Cabo found the most consistent action from the Iman to San Luis Banks. Anglers used a combination of sardinas, which have been plentiful and are now of better size, jurelito, jigged up off of the marina jetty and bolito, which are caught on the fishing grounds themselves early in the day and then slowly trolled around the same vicinity. The majority of the yellowfin that are being hooked into are quality fish of 40 to 80 pounds, which larger fish also reportedly lost due to light tackle. The fish are somewhat line shy and using fluorocarbon leaders of 60 to 80 pound have proved beneficial. This same technique produced hook ups on a variety of species, including at least a couple of unusual offshore roosterfish that weighed from 50 to 65 pounds.
In recent days the yellowfin tuna seemed to be more active within several miles of shore concentrated near structure, there were larger pods of porpoise still found further offshore, but more often than not the yellowfin tuna were not up on the surface ready to bite.
With the humidity off the charts and the persistent strong southern current running, bottomfishing has not been too tempting or productive. Several of the more ambitious commercial pangeros out of La Playita have been catching good numbers of huachinango (red snapper) off of the San Luis Bank, but they are leaving in the darkness in order to capitalize on this action that has been most productive at first light.
The combined panga fleet launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 43 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 4 wahoo, 2 blue marlin, 1 black marlin, 9 sailfish, 5 striped marlin, 9 hammerhead shark, 44 yellowfin tuna, 79 dorado, 15 bonito, 9 dogtooth snapper, 5 grouper, 18 roosterfish, 14 jack crevalle, 7 rainbow runners and 14 amberjack.
Good Fishing, Eric
