June 16, 2013
Anglers –
We are entering the last week of the spring season, crowds of tourists have been slightly lower than expected, as family's are now going through school graduation events and planning their summer schedules. We expect to see more visitors arriving soon for summer vacation time.
There was a cooling trend of the weather this past week, we felt more Pacific air flow and strong ocean currents pushed cooler murky colored water into the Los Cabos area. This pattern helps to keep the climate very pleasant, most days the high temperatures reached the upper 80s and the nights are about perfect at 70 degrees. This transition period always produces rapidly changing up and down climate patterns, hot, cool, cloudy, windy, then ideal and very calm, we see fluctuating ocean currents sweeping through the area, anglers find fishing action varying daily, just like the weather. These patterns contributed to anglers not finding consistent offshore action, though there was excellent fishing found close to the shore and this is where the majority of sportfishing fleets have been concentrated in recent days.
Ocean conditions are now rebounding after turning over last weekend, we are now on a warming trend, water is still a bit off colored, ocean temperatures ranging from 66 degrees off of Cabo San Lucas to about 80 degrees near Los Frailes, off of San Jose del Cabo it is now in the low to mid 70s, this is an extreme variance for a 30 to 40 range.
Anglers targeting offshore action out of Los Cabos reported limited counts of striped marlin being found, not like it had been, with multiple billfish days being common. The East Cape area has reported much better numbers at this time for billfish, with lots of sailfish mixed in with the striped marlin. Not much activity being reported in the way of yellowfin tuna or dorado at this time, as conditions do eventually stabilize offshore we expect to see action break wide open.
In the mean time, with limited offshore action being found the majority of charters are targeting the epic roosterfish bite that is happening along much of coastline. This year the season for these prized gamefish began early and it has peaked this past week, as we saw the best action we have seen in many years for larger trophy sized fish, with big numbers of roosterfish in the 30 to 70 pound class reported every day. The roosters were striking on caballito and moonfish, slowly trolled along the beach stretches, just outside the breaker zone. With practically the entire fleet now targeting this bite, it will be interesting to see how long this fishery can remain productive, heavy boat pressure seems to result in negative impact.
Roosterfish are a migratory species, following their food source, they are members of the jack family, extremely powerful fighters, unpredictably acrobatic at times, reaching sizes up to 100 pounds and they are native to a limited range on the west coast of Pacific waters. Anglers travel from around the world to target these prized fighting gamefish. This is a unique fishery, very fragile and needs protection. This year with so many of numbers of roosterfish schooling in the area we have witnessed a over kill of these economically valuable sport fish, these fish are not known for the eating qualities, but rather for their powerful screaming runs and after these fish are landed they should always be released as carefully as possible. Local residents do really enjoy eating these dark fleshed jacks and this has created a profitable commercial market. Combined with a lack of other normal commercial species recently available, fleets have been exploiting this fishery to the limits, hauling in crate after crate of roosterfish to be shipped off to markets.
As ocean currents are warming again, we are seeing improved action over the inshore rocky structure for a mix of other species, such as pompano, cabrilla, amberjack, dogtooth snapper and pargo cororado, this action tapered way off during the recent water, but the past few days we have seen some amberjack to 65 pounds and quality snapper as well. Bait supplies have remained steady for caballito, moonfish, some mullet, but no sardinas are available. This available bait source is being netting in the marina channel.
The combined panga fleet launching out of Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 72 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of, 1 sailfish, 9 striped marlin, 8 dorado, 31 amberjack, 18 pargo Colorado, 22 yellow snapper, 18 barred pargo, 22 dogtooth snapper, 20 cabrilla, 8 pompano, 12 sierra, 45 jack crevalle and 350 roosterfish.
Good fishing, Eric
