Gordo Banks Pangas
San Jose del Cabo
September 2, 2007
Anglers –
Just like clock work the tropical storm is becoming more active, at the start of the week there was Gil that developed and headed on a westerly track towards Hawaii and only left some scattered rainfall while stirring up ocean conditions, now at this time people with interests in Southern Baja are closely following the track of newly formed Tropical Storm Henriette, which is predicted to reach category one hurricane status later on Sunday and is also appearing to swift off on a more westerly path. Even so, forecasters are predicting rainfall on Monday and Tuesday and high surf conditions, possible of ten to twelve feet, through the first few days of the week.
This will keep panga operators on edge out of La Playita, where the new Puerto Los Cabos marina is still not completed and the panga fleet is vulnerable to southern swells that pass through the jetty opening as though there was nothing there to stop them. Overall despite being behind schedule, the marina project is coming along and hopes are that it will be at least operational for this coming busy fall season.
Ocean water temperatures have ranged from 80 to 85 degrees and the clarity has varied equally, some areas being clean and blue, with others being off colored greenish, particularly over the weekend from Palmilla to Chileno. Live sardinas were plentiful off of Puerto Los Cabos jetties, will be interesting to see if they scatter during the incoming swell activity predicted for the coming days.
The fishing action for this week would have to be considered very good, especially compared to early summer. There were good numbers of dorado found throughout the area, particularly from the Gordo Banks to Iman, fish were striking equally on lures and bait, ranging from 10 to 40 pounds, with a few larger bulls up to 50 pounds being accounted for. Catches of 4 to 12 dorado per boat were common place.
Yellowfin tuna action was not as consistent, but during the first part of the week there were respectable number of football size tuna found within several miles of shore, while trolling smaller lures and then chumming the school up with sardinas. A handful of yellowfin tuna in the fifty-pound class were taken while trolling in the midst of porpoise activity, but these were just one or two single fish here or there.
There were reports of lots of baitfish activity on the Gordo Banks, small yellowfin tuna, bolito, white bonito etc, and early in the week several larger black and blue marlin were hooked into, I know of only one blue marlin that was brought into La Playita and it weighed about 250 pounds, did hear of a 400 pound black also being landed off of a larger sport fisher.
Wahoo decided to become more active, as many of these speedsters were striking on rapalas and other similar lures in the area from La Fortuna to Iman, average size of the fish landed was in the 30-pound range, as usual more of these fish were lost than were actually landed.
Other miscellaneous catches included dogtooth snapper to 35 pounds, amberjack to 25 pounds, cabrilla to 15 pounds, sailfish to 100 pounds, striped marlin to 140 pounds and various smaller pargo species.
The combined panga fleest launching from La Playita reported approximately 71 charters for the week, with anglers reported a fish count of: 1 blue marlin, 4 hammerhead shark, 8 sailfish, 9 striped marlin, 11 wahoo, 310 dorado, 205 yellowfin tuna, 5 dogtooth snapper, 12 cabrilla and 55 assorted pargo species.
Good Fishing, Eric
