November 27, 2011
The Thanksgiving Holiday marks the last really busy week before the normal slack period building towards the Christmas and New Year's Holiday season. Visitors are enjoying near perfect weather conditions, mostly sunny days with highs near 80 degrees. Ocean temperatures are still averaging 79 to 82 degrees, which is at least a couple of degrees warmer that at this same period last year. Winds have become more predominant from the north, but on most days have been switching to blowing out of the east, then from the south. There was a late season Hurricane that formed off of the Southern Mexican coast this past week, named Kenneth, this system was powerful, packing winds up to 145 mph, but never passed closer than 700 miles from Cabo San Lucas, some outer bands of clouds were visible and ocean swells are predicted to range up to five ft. through the weekend. With the new moon phase, tides are now very extreme, minus tides in the afternoon.
In recent days there have been reports of mackerel and sardinetas being found locally, off of the San Jose del Cabo area, this always open up options, typically for striped marlin, dorado and wahoo. While more striped marlin are now appearing, there are still chances of hooking into a late season blue or black marlin, also some sailfish being found closer to shore.
Dorado action was now being found from off of the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas to Red Hill , Punta Gorda and the Iman Bank. The bite was not consistent from day to day, some days more fish were found in one area, while on the next day they were not necessarily in the same spot. Average sizes of dorado ranged 5 to 20 pounds. They were striking on various small to medium sized lures and different live baitfish. Caballito, sardinas and now some mackerel and made up the bait options, though sardinas remain limited in quantities, schools now seem to be migrating towards the beaches near Vinorama, which is where they usually congregate during this time.
With clean warm blue water now found close to shore, most fleets are finding more fish in close proximity of shore. Surprisingly quite a few roosterfish along the beaches now, also the season's first sierra schools are arriving, along with some tough jack crevalle.
Yellowfin tuna action has continued to taper off from the first week of the month, still some tuna in the area of Gordo Banks to Iman Bank, limited supplies of sardinas, as well as breezy conditions through the first part of the week made this even a tougher situation, lots of chum is now needed to entice the tuna in feeding mood. Some very aggressive pesky sea lions are also causing havoc on certain fishing grounds, not even giving anglers a chance to keep a bait fish in the water. A handful of 100 pound class yellowfin were landed this week from the Gordo Banks, a few 20 to 50 pound tuna were scattered over other fishing grounds, but no significant numbers of tuna this past week. Dorado were the more active species throughout the entire week.
Wahoo remained elusive, they are definitely in the area though, everyday a few of these fish were being landed, striking more often on caballito or chihuil. Now there is the new option of mackerel and sardinetas, proven to be candy baits for wahoo. Of course when specifically targeting wahoo it is always good to have your personal array of Rapalas and skirted trolling heads as well. Also the time of year when wahoo will hit the chrome patterned yo-yo jigs that are cast into chummed waters.
The combined local La Playita panga fleets sent out approximately 182 charters, with anglers reports a fish count of: 9 striped marlin, 10 sailfish, 34 wahoo, 30 yellowfin tuna, 510 dorado, 9 dogtooth snapper, 15 cabrilla, 28 jack crevalle, 84 roosterfish and 34 sierra.
Good Fishing, Eric
