December 14, 2008
Anglers '
The middle part of December is time when tourism drops off in the Los Cabos area, as people are generally spending their time preparing for the coming holiday season. For the people that are now traveling to southern Baja they have been enjoying great late fall weather conditions, for the most part sunny days with temperatures reaching 80 degrees. This past week there was a few days when the north winds blew up to 15 miles per hour and as we get further into the month we will be expecting more of this pattern. So far the water temperature had been holding in the 78 to 80 degrees range, but we are now starting to see a cooling off trend that will most certainly continue for the next couple of months.
The incredible striped marlin action that has been going on for the past eight weeks or so has continued on the Pacific fishing grounds. Massive schools of mackerel and other baitfish have attracted the billfish in record numbers and are gradually migrating in the direction closer to Cabo San Lucas. Some of the stories being told are almost unbelievable, bait balls being attacked by feeding marlin, sea lions and whales at the same time, while photographers were able to be underwater filming the frenzy.
The fishing for the San Jose del Cabo fleets has concentrated mainly on the fishing grounds from Punta Gorda, Gordo Banks, La Fortuna and Iman Bank. The main attraction has been dorado, yellowfin tuna and dorado, the action has been on the surface, not much going on off the bottom or along the shoreline yet, that will come later as the water temperatures cool. The first week of December produced the best wahoo bite of the fall season, several charters reported up to five wahoo landed and many other strikes lost as well. Fish were ranging in sizes from 10 to 50 pounds, striking on a wide variety of lures and baits, including sardinas, caballito, Rapala, Yo-Yuri, Marauder and yo-yo. After the north winds increased this wahoo action declined, but they were still were being found daily in limited numbers, the hot spots seem to be switching back and forth from La Fortuna to Punta Gorda. Clean blue water is now found almost to the beaches and in fact in recent days many dorado have been hooked into by anglers fishing close to the shoreline looking for sierra or roosterfish action. The dorado bite has been very good for this late in the season, not huge fish, but good numbers on fish ranging up to twenty pounds. Anglers should remember that the limit per person for dorado is two fish, this is being enforced in the Los Cabos area for the most part, but other reports are that limits are nonexistent in areas between San Jose del Cabo and La Paz, this situation is apparently due to the lack of government officials.
Yellowfin tuna have been found on the Inner Gordo Bank, to Iman and La Fortuna, nice sized fish, most of them in the 20 to 60 pound class, problem was getting them to bite. Supplies of sardinas have been scarce and are now being found only in the Palmilla region, this has meant back tracking for the panga fleets out of La Playita, along with waiting around for the pangueros to net sufficient amounts. Lots of small sized squid being found in the stomachs of the tuna, this is what they are now feeding on, so it has been more difficult to entice them into taking other offerings. Yellowfin were found mixed with porpoise, often times as close as one or two miles from Punta Gorda, these fish were caught in limited numbers on bait and only a few were reportedly hit on smaller sized hoochie type lures.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 49 charters for the past week and anglers reported a fish count of:
2 sailfish, 1 striped marlin, 290 dorado, 142 yellowfin tuna, 74 wahoo, 22 bonito
and 44 mixed species of pargo.
Good Fishing, Eric
