Gordo Banks Pangas
San Jose del Cabo
March 9, 2008
Anglers -
As the spring season approaches the crowds of tourists visiting the Los Cabos area is progressively increasing. The heat wave of last week resided and we are back to the normal weather pattern for this time of year, on and off winds ranging 10 to 15 miles per hour out of the north, clear sunny skies, lows of about 50 early in the morning and daytime high temperatures reaching the upper 70s. Ocean currents continue to fluctuate from day to day and in recent days there was once again a cooling trend that dropped average temperatures down into the 64 to 68 degree range. Surf conditions also increased, stirring up the inshore water and making it more difficult for the commercial pangueros to net schooling sardinas. Mackerel continue to school in the normal areas off of San Jose del Cabo, though there was a lack of gamefish to use them on because of the overall water conditions. Whale watching continues to be wide open, with scores of both gray and humpbacks being spotted spouting and breeching on any given day.
Red crabs was the talk around the La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos area in recent days, as one of the pangueros received a call early in the week that these elusive crustaceans were being pushed to the surface by giant squid that were gorging themselves on these delicacies, this was in an area offshore of Chileno. They filled the panga with as many as the small crabs as they could and generously distributed them among the other fishermen back at the marina, they were being kept alive in makeshift bait tanks, but as of this writing supplies are nearly exhausted and hopes are that this candy bait will surface once again. The entire Playita fleet, both commercial and the deportiva sportfishing fleets were using these baits to fish for the prized huachinango ( true Pacific red snapper), working the various rock piles from the Gordo Banks, Cardon, La Fortuna to Iman. Once these fish get a taste for the red crabs it is hard to catch them on anything else, more often than not the crabs are congregated deep, with the fish gorging on them, though if the bait does not get pushed to the surface or drift up when the current slacks, there is no way to obtain them and anglers are out of luck. The snapper that are now being caught are ranging in size from 4 to 12 pounds. Not many other species being found now besides some whitefish, Mexican bonito and an occasional amberjack, cabrilla or yellowtail on the yo-yo jigs.
The billfish continues to be poor throughout the region. There are some yellowfin tuna being found, but they were 30 to 40 miles from shore and are smaller football sized fish, though when they were encountered traveling underneath porpoise, anglers were able to score big numbers in a hurry. Inshore fishing was not consistent, the recent swell activity created dirty conditions and there were only scattered reports of sierra and small roosterfish were reported.
The combined panga fleets launching out of the La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos area sent out approximately 59 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
425 huachinango (red snapper), 104 Mexican bonito, 16 yellowtail, 21 amberjack, 13 cabrilla, 22 sierra and 13 roosterfish.
Good Fishing, Eric
