November 3, 2012
Anglers –
The Los Cabos area is now bustling with anglers, visitors are enjoying pristine weather conditions and with no new threatening storms forming at this time, it appears this same favorable pattern will continue. Mornings are cooler, light sweatshirt are recommended, skies have been clear, pleasantly warm, reaching the low 80's. Trade winds at daybreak were from offshore and then the breeze would shift from out of the north/northeast. At times the seas were choppy in the direction of Iman and the East Cape. Ocean water temperatures were averaging 81/84 degrees and clean blue water is now found within a mile shore.
Anglers found comfortable seas, particularly closer to shore, where some of the most consistent fishing action for the past few weeks has been. The grounds off of Santa Maria to Cerro Colorado have produced a quality mix of yellowfin tuna, skipjack, dorado and wahoo. No significant numbers of wahoo yet, but everyday some are being hooked into on trolled lures, Rapala XRaps in purple have been taking a good share of strikes. The majority of the wahoo strikes reportedly were taken earlier in the day, then the action on the yellowfin tuna skipjack and dorado dominated the bite. Yellowfin tuna in the 10 to 16 lb. class were schooling with what the locals refer to as "white skipjack", very feisty aggressive fish which are fair eating as well, unlike the black skipjack
The recent full moon was exceptionally bright and seemed to slow the action down a notch or two. Heavy boat pressure now as well, Los Cabos is no longer the small fishing town it was, hard to keep a hot spot secret, the word is out that the cow sized yellowfin tuna are schooling on the Gordo Banks. Everyday tuna of 200 pounds are being landed, no great numbers, but there are a handful of impressive sized tuna being landed daily. Some days more than others, at times the yellowfin would show breezing the surface or be seen feeding in the chunk bait slick, these fish are present in force, but are finicky to bite, all of these larger grade of tuna are striking on various baits, live, dead, chunk or combinations. Anglers are now mainly drift fishing baits while chumming, normally a recipe of sardinas mixed with chunks of skipjack. It is wise to use heavier 80 pound tackle, fluorocarbon 80 to 120 lb. has been most common leader, as these tuna became progressively more line shy through the past week. Largest yellowfin tuna brought in this week for the local panga fleet was landed by Michael Brady of Pasadena and weighed in at 280 pounds. Brady was fishing aboard the 23 ft. "Katie" with skipper Jesus Pino on the Gordo Banks, fish apparently hit on a couple of dead sardinas mixed with a piece of skipjack chunk bait. Other specimens up to 260 lb. were brought to the docks and of course many big fish were lost after long battles due to broken lines or pulled hooks.
During the full moon period baitfish are often harder to find, they seem to scatter into deeper waters. Despite having to search harder, bait netters were able to find sufficient supplies of sardinas and these have definitely been the choice of bait necessary for the inshore football tuna, skipjack and dorado action. Larger concentrations of schooling sardinas were found from Palmilla, towards Santa Maria, on some days pangeros were able to find the baitfish in close proximity of the PLC jetty entrance. Depending on where charters were able to obtain bait dictated on which fishing grounds were in practical range. For this reason not that many numbers of charters did fish the Iman to San Luis area this past week, those that did had mixed reports, encountering wind chop, some anglers reported one or two fish and others caught eight to ten. A mix of dorado, tuna and a chance at wahoo. The yellowfin found around Iman Bank were larger than the fish off of Santa Maria, some of these were to 20/25 pounds.
Not much bottom action these days, with tuna and other surface species now available most charters are targeting these fish. As water temperatures drop a few degrees we expect some better options for bottom dwellers to open up.
The combined panga fleets out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina, sent out approximately 182 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
20 wahoo, 8 sailfish, 355 dorado, 1160 yellowfin tuna, 6 amberjack, 4 dogtooth snapper, 16 sierra, 24 pargo and 1500 skipjack .
Good Fishing, Eric
