November 11, 2007
Anglers -
Los Cabos is now bustling with tourists and visiting anglers and they are enjoying absolutely paradise like weather conditions, clear sunny skies with highs in the 80s. There was an unseasonal southern hemisphere swell that pushed in during the first part of the week creating surf in the six to eight foot range and this gave the surfers something to hoot and holler about, by the weekend the swell had diminished and ocean conditions were flat glass calm, very slight breeze from the north. Water temperatures were holding steady in the 78 to 82 degree range and there was no particular area where there was a significant break. Clarity closer to shore was still a murky and greenish north of Gordo Banks to Iman, with a strong current running, but beautiful cobalt blue water was being located further offshore. For live bait supplies there was a choice of mackerel, caballito and sardinas, the plentiful schools of sardinas off of the Puerto Los Cabos area were more scattered due to the heavy pressure of the past couple of weeks, on some days charters had to back track to Palmilla in order to find sufficient daily supplies.
There continued to be some epic stories being told about incredible striped marlin action encountered, either on the fishing grounds off of the Pacific or straight offshore of Cabo San Lucas, some boats reporting as many as 30 billfish caught and released on one trip. Inside the direction of the Sea of Cortez there were some marlin being spotted, but these were few and far between compared to the reports coming from the Pacific side, where massive schools of mackerel were enticing the stripers into a feeding frenzy.
For the combined cruiser and panga fleets departing out of San Jose del Cabo they found the most consistent action from the Gordo Banks to Iman Bank. Yellowfin tuna were the mainstay of the fish counts, with the fish averaging 8 to 20 pounds, depending on the location and particular day there were a couple of different grades of tuna being found. Drift fishing while chumming with live sardinas was the most productive technique and boats were reporting average daily catches of 6 to 12 yellowfin. Dorado were found in similar areas, but they were not as consistent or as numerous, though some pangas did have very respectable catches of up to 6, 8 or even 10 dorado, they were striking on the various baitfish and artificial lures, most of these fish were under 15 pounds.
Wahoo have remained very elusive, even more so as the inshore water conditions turned greenish during the recent increased swell activity, as long as the water temperature does not drop into the lower 70 degree range there is good reason to believe that these sought after game fish will become more active when water clarity improves. A few wahoo were reported in the past couple of days from the area of man, a pair of nice ‘hoo were taken by Greg Young from Santa Barbara while fishing with Gordo Banks Pangas skpper Niko, Greg hooked both of these fish on yo-yo jigs, on back to back casts. Another 40 pound class wahoo was hooked on a fly lined sardina without the use of any wire leader and was carefully brought to gaff by Dick Hall of Oregon.
Other miscellaneous catches included a few dogtooth snapper, cabrilla, grouper, huachinango (red snapper), sierra, triggerfish and shark.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita sent out approximately 204 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 5 striped marlin, 6 sailfish, 8 wahoo, 7 dogtooth snapper, 68 various pargo/snapper, 38 sierra, 1 mako shark, 3 hammerhead shark, 3 gulf grouper, 29 cabrilla, 1,480 yellowfin tuna and
455 dorado.
Good Fishing, Eric
