Anglers –
Not many tourists visiting Los Cabos at this time, which is typical for the month of September. This is tropical storm season, many people are scared off by that, actually the weather has been very nice, quite humid as is expected, though overall it has not been as hot as it is normally for this time of year. Throughout the mid portion of the week and through the weekend all local interests were closely following the development of Hurricane Ivo, originally predicted to curve around and strike the lower Peninsula, as of Sunday morning it had been downgraded to a tropical depression and had slowed down to a crawl and was likely to make landfall in the area between Todo Santos and San Carlos. Some choppy seas, moderate winds and scattered rainfall were expected, but all in all it does not appear that anything serious will come out of this. Though the local captain of Port from San Jose del Cabo did notify all sportfishing fleets that the Port of San Jose del Cabo would be shut down as a precaution for the day of Sunday, though a few boats had already launched and were out by the time this word came out.
Water conditions fluctuated from the first part of the week, when the clarity improved and currents were slack, then over the weekend some areas became a bit off colored, though none of that really mattered because fish counts for dorado and yellowfin tuna were very good throughout most of the week. Though crowds of anglers were down, the few that were going out did very well in the areas from the Gordo Banks to Vinorama, particularly on the Iman Bank. Water temperatures ranged from 80 to 84 degrees and supplies of sardinas were plentiful off of Puerto Los Cabos, La Playita area. On the fishing ground there were abundant schools of bolito and skipjack, which were also being used as whole and cut baits.
The majority of the yellowfin tuna were striking on bait, either drift fishing or slow trolling. Most of the fish were in the 10 to 15 pound class, though some larger tuna were also starting to appear and a handful of fish in the 50 to 70 pound range were accounted for, these larger specimens preferred larger bolito baits or dead sardinas drifted in a chum line.
Dorado were hard to stay away from, even striking hoochie skirts when targeting bolito batifish, in fact hitting on a wide assortment of lures as well as different baitfish combinations. Some anglers found floating debris fields, such as weeds or logs and told great stories about all of the dorado they encountered and even seeing wahoo darting around. Average size fish were in the 10 to 20 pound range, but a few bulls to over 50 pounds were weighed in.
Billfish action was spread out, though most anglers were actually targeting the dorado and tuna action, we did here about one nice 400 to 450 pound black marlin landed from a local 30 ft. cruiser while trolling a boltio baitfish in the area outside of San Luis Bank.
The combined panga fleets from La Playita sent out approximately 43 charters for the week, with anglers accounted for a fish count of: 3 wahoo, 2 striped marlin, 4 sailfish, 430 yellowfin tuna, 265 dorado and 72 miscellaneous pargo and cabrilla.
Good Fishing, Eric
