October 25, 2009
Anglers –
Large crowds of anglers arrived in the Los Cabos area with anticipation of trolling the deep blue waters of the Sea of Cortez, many of the visitors were participants of the Bisbee Black and Blue Tournament, the world's richest fishing event, which was delayed by one day, now starting on Thursday morning. Mother Nature once again disrupted everybody's plans, as on Sunday morning high surf conditions started to arrive from the extremely powerful category five Hurricane Rick that had formed in Southern Mexico waters and was predicted to follow a path that would take it directly towards Cabo San Lucas. All necessary precautions were taken and local ports were closed through Wednesday, though the storm weakened as fast as it had developed so much strength and veered off on a track some 100 miles south of Cabo, before making landfall near Mazatlan as a Tropical Storm. Besides the inconvenience of hauling boats and making all of the other routine preparations Rick never really amounted to much, steady drizzle with some isolated harder thundershowers during Tuesday evening, associated with moderate wind gusts. Overall the area was fortunate to have once again dodged the bullet and did not receive any significant damage from the system, minor flooding and loss of business being the major impact.
Before the storm fleets were just getting back in the flow of things, having been shut down by Tropical Strom Patricia for three days during the previous week. Water was just clearing back up to pre storm conditions and dorado was the most common fish being encountered. Most charters were working the areas from Santa Maria north to San Luis Bank, the majority of the dorado found weighed in the 10 to 15 pound class, though there were impressive size bulls up to 40 pounds accounted for, these fish were striking on various baits, mainly sardinas and caballito, as well as trolled lures.
Yellowfin tuna were scarcer, though were found in limited numbers, recently the best spots for yellowfin were either on the San Luis Bank, to Vinorama or Santa Maria. Drift fishing with sardinas was the most successful technique, most of these tuna were of the football variety, though the area between Iman and San Luis Bank did produce a handful of larger tuna up to 70 pounds. Black skipjack proved to be a nuisance on some days, as they moved in on the same areas and were so aggressive that it was hard to effectively fish for the tuna, though if you were lucky you could hook into a couple of yellowfin.
Wahoo were found in the areas further north, Iman to Vinorama, as well as off of Santa Maria. Anglers trolling the normal array of lures reported varying success for these elusive members of the mackerel family. We expect these fish to become more active in the coming weeks as waters temperatures drop into their preference range of 76 to 80 degrees. The wahoo that have been landed recently were weighing in the 20 to 45 pound range, with Rapala type lures accounting for a higher percentage of strikes versus lead or jet heads with squid skirts.
The combined panga fleets launching out of the La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 62 charters for the storm shortened week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 1 striped marlin, 5 sailfish, 6 wahoo, 188 dorado, 42 yellowfin tuna, 166 black skipjack,18 bonito, 8 rainbow runner, 3 dogtooth snapper, 12 barred pargo, 8 huachinango (red snapper), 14 sierra, 5 roosterfish and 28 triggerfish.
Good fishing, Eric
