September 20, 2009
Anglers –
The summer season will be officially over in a week, this will be welcome news for Southern Baja, which has endured another long hot and humid summer. Typically the fall period is one of the busiest times for local sportfishing charter operations due to the great weather and varying fishing options, it also the time of year when a series of high stake fishing tournaments take place. So we are all looking forward to cooler weather patterns and increased crowds of tourists. This past week there was no significant news with weather events, sunny days with plenty of humidity, there was an increased ocean swell that peaked mid week before residing, causing excitement for surfers but nothing else. The swell activity was created by the development of Tropical Storm Marty, which is now centered some two hundred miles off to the west and predicted to slowly weaken as it tracks over cooler water conditions while it heads on a northwesterly path.
Fishing action has been spread out to areas off of the Pacific, straight out of Cabo San Lucas, to other regions in the direction of the Sea of Cortez, north of Iman Bank, to Vinorama and Los Frailes. Most charters are now concentrating on the offshore banks where baitfish schools are attracting the normal variety of warm water pelagic gamefish species. Not much action being found along the beach stretches recently, which is normal during the time when there is increased swell and wave action which scatters schooling baitfish. Clean blue water averaging 80 to 85 degrees is now being found close in, which means the majority of charters are fishing with two to eight miles from shore.
Live sardinas are being netted off of the Puerto Los Cabos Jetties, a bit more scattered, but pangeros been able to find sufficient amounts on most days. Giant squid proved harder to entice this past week off of the La Laguna trench as compared to last week when they were found closer to the surface. Often times anglers were having to drop their jigs to over 700 feet to find any takers. A lot of effort, that was also very time consuming and was not even a guarantee.
Panga charters out of San Jose were fishing from the Gordo Banks to Vinorama. Around the Gordo Banks there were large concentrations of skipjack and some bolito, These baits are being used for slow trolling and despite there not being big numbers of fish hooked with this technique, anglers putting in a patient effort have hooked into black and blue marlin up to 500 pounds this past week, there was also a 250 pound cow sized yellowfin tuna landed by a commercial pangero, though this was just one big tuna, there were more concentrations of yellowfin found near the Iman Bank and towards Vinorama.
The bite for yellowfin tuna that averaged in the 30 to 90 pound class and had been going on around the Iman Bank consistently for the past several weeks has steadily weakened during the past week, as the fish became very finicky, they would show on the surface, breezing most of the time, but more often than not they would not be interested in any offerings with hooks in them. Though with persistency, patience and a little luck, anglers drift fishing with live or dead sardinas and fresh cut strips from giant squid, while chumming with the same, were averaging one or two of these yellowfin per outing. On Thursday the tuna seemed to have moved off of the Iman Bank and further north to the Vinorama area, this is where the 100 fathom curve comes within one mile of shore. Yellowfin tuna were found free jumping and readily came up on live sardinas, when boat pressure was light they also hit on medium sized trolling feathers, these fish were mixed in size, from footballs to 80 pounds. The few charters that did encounter these schools accounted for 5 to 12 fish in a short period of time. There are larger sized yellowfin tuna being found straight out from Cabo San Lucas and towards the Pacific banks, often traveling with pods of porpoise, these prospects should get all interests of the WON Tuna Jackpot pumped up in anticipation of this popular event that will be held in early November.
The same areas have produced dorado, most of them juvenile sized, 5 to 15 pounds, but some offshore charters have reported finding a few very impressive sized bulls, including one fish of 65 pounds. Just a handful of wahoo strikes being reported, but we will look for these elusive fish to become more active as the fall season arrives.
Off the bottom anglers encountered swift currents, but there were a mix of huachinango (red snapper), cabrilla, grouper and bonito accounted for by anglers using yo-yo iron and various whole and cut baits.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 39 charters for this past week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 4 black marlin, 2 blue marlin, 7 sailfish, 5 wahoo, 192 dorado, 63 yellowfin tuna, 26 bonito, 7 rainbow runner, 11 cabrilla, 3 grouper,18 huachinango, 3 dogtooth snapper and 45 black skipjack.
Good Fishing, Eric
