Gordo Banks Pangas
San Jose del Cabo
Happy New Year's!
January 3, 2009
Anglers –
The Los Cabos area was busy during the Christmas Holiday week as many families were in town enjoying the warm wintertime sunshine, while taking advantage of all of the available outdoor activities, including the world class sportfishing action. Though the cooler northern winds have started to become more persistent the local ocean water temperatures have still been holding in the lower 70s and the conditions apparently are still favorable enough to have kept surface species such as dorado, yellowfin tuna and wahoo in the region.
Schools of mackerel baitfish are now moving into the waters off of San Jose del Cabo and fleets were able to catch some of these baits while using shrimp fly rigs. Sardinas continued to be netted off of Palmilla Point, though sizes were small and supplies were limited. The most consistent action for this past week was found from Punta Gorda to La Fortuna, with the fish concentrated in areas no more than one mile from shore.
Yellowfin tuna action was spottier, this after they went on a big bite during the days right before Christmas. Some tuna to 50 pounds were accounted for anglers drift fishing with sardinas, more often in was mid day when these fish would come to the surface and feed and the schools would disappear just as fast as they had appeared.
It was definitely the dorado action that highlighted the action in recent days. Quality sized for this late in the season. With bulls reportedly as large as 40 pounds and many fish in the 15 to 25 pound class. They were striking on trolled lures, but anglers had best results while slow trolling with either live or dead baits, sardinas and mackerel worked well, though it was the larger baits that accounted for a higher percentage of nicer sized fish. Limits were fairly easy to come by, with most anglers releasing as many fish as they were keeping.
We expect that we are now seeing the final hoorah of wahoo activity, as with water temperatures continuing to drop these fish will certainly be seeking out warmer southern regions. Punta Gorda and spots near Cardona and La Fortuna were still attracting schools of wahoo, though they were not wide open and decided to bite when they felt like it, there a good chance that during a morning charter that anglers would be able to hook into one or more of these speedsters. There were a couple of days when anglers really got into them, having as many as one dozen wahoo strikes in a morning, striking on baits, as well as on trolled and casted lures. Of course there were high percentages of lost strikes, as is normal when fishing for wahoo, the fish that were landed ranged in sizes up to forty pounds.
Inshore action is showing signs of improvement, with sierra and roosterfish both found while trolling baits along the local beach stretches. The season's first yellowtail are appearing around the Cabo San Lucas inshore areas.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 108 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:
8 striped marlin, 2 sailfish, 6 hammerhead shark, 28 sierra, 15 roosterfish, 26 wahoo, 432 dorado, 18 yellowfin tuna, 13 bonito, 18 triggerfish, 9 amberjack and 24 pargo.
Good Fishing, Eric
