June 15, 2009
Anglers –
With the warm summer season now just around the corner, the ideal weather conditions felt this past week are now being enjoyed by everyone. Ocean water temperatures are now in the 80s in the direction of the Sea of Cortez and on the Pacific it has averaged in the upper 70s. Schools of mullet are congregating along many of the local beaches and the offshore fishing grounds are seeing larger schools of bolito and small skipjack moving in, this is always a good sign that gamefish will not be far behind. Much of the action in recent days has been centered from off of Chelino to Vinorama.
There has continued to be a shortage of sardinas, higher surf conditions have not allowed the pangueros to safely reach where these baitfish are schooling. This is now the time of year that in 2008 the sardinas schooled so heavily inside of the Puerto Los Cabos Marina we are waiting to see if the same event will occur this year. In the mean time the local bait sellers have been offering caballito and mullet.
Panga charters out of San Jose del Cabo have been concentrating their efforts on the areas from El Cardon, La Fortuna, Iman, San Luis to Vinorama. Each day is changing, as to where anglers are reporting more baitfish and action. With all of the baitfish on these grounds there is now a chance of anything, big tuna, dorado, billfish, dorado, etc…On Wednesday a panga charter out of La Playita landed a 170 pound class yellowfin tuna that hit on a trolled bolito bait in the area just outside of San Luis Bank, they reported a double hook up on big tuna, one coming off. A larger sportfisher out of Cabo had reported a double strike on a pair of two hundred pound tuna, so this is good news that some cows are starting to be seen locally.
Dorado have slowly begun to increase in numbers, trolling lures and various baits is producing, both inshore and offshore, trolled bolito baits have accounted for a larger percentage of the bulls accounted for this past week. Striped marlin are now around in quantity, seen jumping, tailing and feeding, coming closer to shore in recent days, attracted by the food source and warm clean water conditions. The bite for the stripers has been up and down, some days it would be wide open and on others there were many reports of seeing marlin but not hooking up. The stripers are hitting equally well on bait and lures, nicer grade of fish lately, a few stripers close to 200 pounds reported.
The action close to shore has been mainly for medium sized roosterfish, not as many monsters around now, though at any time they could appear, the bait is here. The dogtooth snapper bite tampered off rapidly and this is the time when we will see the snapper start appearing back on the banks such as Iman, La Fortuna, Gordo, etc…
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 48 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 16 striped marlin, 2 wahoo, 8 yellowfin tuna, 45 dorado, 64 roosterfish, 18 sierra, 12 hammerhead shark, 11 amberjack, 34 various pargo species, 14 cabrilla, 18 bonito, 5 rainbow runner and 12 jack crevalle.
Good Fishing, Eric
