November 26, 2009
Anglers –
Happy Thanksgiving!
Vacationers arriving in Los Cabos were welcomed to pristine fall time weather conditions. By Thursday a.m. more clouds moved in, as a front pushing through, high temperatures were reaching up to 80 degrees earlier in the week. There were several days when the north wind created choppy white capped seas in the direction of the Sea of Cortez. Ocean temperatures are averaging 80 degrees or more through much of the area, cooler waters are just around the corner from Cabo San Lucas.
The live bait situation has varied some each day, most mornings there have been caballito available early and then later in the morning commercial pangas would arrive on the fishing grounds near the Iman Bank with sardinas for sale. It should not be long before schools of mackerel appear in the waters of San Jose del Cabo.
Anglers that did obtain live sardinas reported mixed success for yellowfin tuna in the 10 to 20 pound class. Catches ranged from two or three fish per boat, to as high as a dozen. The tuna would come up and be seen feeding on the surface, they would also unpredictably vanish. The larger sized yellowfin tuna are still lurking in the vicinity of the Gordo Banks, the famed local pangero team out of La Playita, Hugo and his son Agustine Pino, were key members of the winning team on the "Fisherman" during the recent WON Tuna Jackpot, when they nearly set a world record with a 383 pound yellowfin, the 150 pound tuna they landed while trolling a live bolito on Wednesday was a reminder that big fish remain in the area, several other tuna were hooked in by anglers chumming and drift fishing with chunk bait, most of these fish ranged 70 to 90 pounds, more charters were actually targeting the wahoo action to the north.
Wahoo are now the most active that they have been all season in the areas from Punta Gorda to the Iman Bank. The wahoo have been striking on a combination of various baits and lures. Rigged frozen ballyhoo are becoming more popular, live caballito rigged on trap hooks are the most common bait used presently. Rapala deep diving lures have accounted for a larger percentage of jig strikes, a surprisingly number of wahoo were also landed by anglers using sardinas on straight mono line. It has been common to have three to five strikes by wahoo during a morning outing, landing one or two wahoo has been more like the average. Sizes averaged 25 to 35 pounds, an occasional fish up to 50 pounds or more being reported.
Dorado have been scattered, some charters have reported landing six or eight fish, while other boats might encounter one or two, or maybe not even see one all day. The majority of the dorado now being landed have been in the 5 to 15 pound range, same areas of La Fortuna, Cardon and Iman had scattered schools of dorado, the later part of the week had reports of several bull dorado up to 25 pounds.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 176 charters this past week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:
8 sailfish, 9 striped marlin, 237 yellowfin tuna, 158 wahoo, 138 dorado, 7 amberjack, 16 sierra and 38 bonito.
Good Fishing, Eric
