January 6, 2008
Anglers -
Los Cabos welcomed the New Year in fine style, with crowds of vacationing families enjoying clear and warm wintertime weather. Perhaps the actual numbers of tourists was down compared to last season, but nevertheless the area was bustling. The past three weeks there has been persistent wind from the north, unpredictably on and off, but more often than not it was on and gusting to per 15 miles per hour, after such a calm month of November, this was a bit depressing, we now hope that this means the winds will blow themselves out and the normally windy period of February might turn out to be nicer than usual. Despite these winds anglers were still able to find very respectable fishing action in the protected inshore waters near Cab San Lucas and on the Pacific. Water temperature varied from 68 to 73 degrees, the warmest currents now found in the vicinty of Cabo San Lucas. Clarity has fluctuated from day to day, depending on the flow of the current, at this time we are experienced a cleaning trend and the fishing has improved accordingly.
The striped marlin bite has continued to produce outstanding numbers of fish off the fishing grounds on the Pacific, with double digit catches being relatively common. The migration of these billfish is now moving closer to Cabo San Lucas, off the El Faro area and around into the Sea of Cortez on the 95 spot off of Chileno. Stripers are striking best on live mackerel, but have showed increased interest in trolled surface lures as well. The same fishing grounds are now welcoming the arrival of the annual migration of humpback and gray whales, this spectacle should last for the next couple of months until the ocean waters warm and these great mammals begin their journey back towards their northern feeding grounds.
Yellowfin tuna were still being found in limited numbers off of Punta Gorda to San Luis, though on many days anglers were not able to fish these areas due to the choppy conditions created by the winds. In recent days only a scattering of yellowfin were landed, but the sizes were larger than the normal football, some of the fish were up to 40 pounds. Over the weekend the weather was spectacular, no wind and temperatures to 85 degrees, the action picked up accordingly. There were reports of larger cow sized yellowfin tuna being seen breezing on the Jaime Bank, but these fish were not on the bite. Perhaps there will be a winter bite for larger tuna since nothing really ever developed during this past summer or fall season.
Even though water conditions were cooling and not ideal for dorado there were surprisingly good numbers of these fish accounted for during the past week. The area from one to tthree miles offshore from the Melia to Cabo San Lucas were particularly productive, lots of bolito and small skipjack were schooling in this area and this was helping to attract the dorado. The dorado were striking on trolled lures, both hoochies and feathers, along with whole and strip baits. Charters averaged 2 to 5 fish a trip, some boats even had more, sizes were mostly in the 8 to 15 pound range, but a few fish up to 20 or 30 pounds were mixed in.
One nice 60 pound class wahoo was landed from a panga on Wednesday that was trolling a Rapala off of Punta Gorda and a few other reports of wahoo came from the 95 spot.
Inshore action included a mix of sierra, roosterfish and jack crevalle, most of this near Cabo San Lucas where conditions were calmer. There was not much talk of bottom action this past week.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita sent out approximately 92 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 13 striped marlin, 2 wahoo,
46 yellowfin tuna, 288 dorado, 28 sierra, 12 jack crevalle, 16 roosterfish, 16 cabrilla, 9 amberjack, 22 pargo and 26 bonito.
Good fishing, Eric
