October 21, 2012
Anglers –
Crowds of visiting anglers are increasing daily, all are arriving anticipating the exciting tournament season in Los Cabos. We were fooled over last weekend by a storm system which developed into Hurricane Paul. This late season front appeared to be harmlessly headed off to the west, but turned back towards land and caused havoc throughout the Baja Peninsula. Southern Baja received substantial rainfall on Monday and especially on Tuesday morning, along with wind gusts to 40 mph, Los Cabos was fortunate, as this was from the backside of Paul, other areas to north suffered much more damage. Ports were closed for Monday and Tuesday, with operations resuming on Wednesday morning. Once again road crews are working overtime to clean up the mess from flooding.
Swells peaked at about 4 meters on Tuesday morning, but with each passing day ocean conditions are settling and clarity is improving, water had become very murky from the desert run off. Blue water is being reported again and we expect action to improve as conditions rebound. Ocean water temperatures are now averaging 85 to 87 degrees. Baitfish have become more scattered after the recent storm passed through. Sardinas were now being found most commonly off of the beaches from Palmilla to Santa Maria.
Before the storm there had been a great bite for yellowfin tuna off of the Cabeza Ballena and Santa Maria area. The tuna were mostly in the 10 to 15 pound range, with lots of skipjack mixed in and a few dorado. These fish would hit on trolled rapala or hoochies, but the live sardinas were the best bet for really getting into the fast action. The fishing grounds north of Punta Gorda were starting to feel some affect from north winds, pushing baitfish down and stirring up the water, with the live sardinas being in the other direction, this is when the bite off of Santa Maria came to life last week, very fun action on light tackle for the football model yellowfin tuna, though the skipjack proved to be even too numerous to deal with at times.
On Wednesday, the first day fleets resumed charter operations, even though live sardinas were scarce, there were good numbers of yellowfin caught off of Santa Maria, the bite had picked right off from how it had been pre-storm. However the next day, Thursday, the skipjack completely dominated the action and most people never even saw a tuna, besides scores of the feisty skipjack there was an average of one dorado per boat was accounted for. We do expect to see the larger tuna to become active once again on the Gordo Banks.
With offshore conditions once again quickly improving, we are anticipating some great action to develop just in time for the crowds of anxious anglers to take advantage of.
Next week is the Bisbee Black and Blue event, the granddaddy of all billfish tournaments in the world, will be interesting to follow all of the story lines that develop from this year's jackpot.
This was a rain shortened week, then we were dealing with murky water conditions that slowed down the action, we are now just waiting for things to get back on track and hoping that we have no more rainfall for a while. Weather is great now, cooler mornings, with warm sunny days and no new storm on the horizon.
The combined panga fleets out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina, sent out approximately 108 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
2 sailfish, 3 striped marlin, 4 wahoo, 11 amberjack, 15 pargo, 8 sierra, 112 dorado, 1250 skipjack and 850 yellowfin tuna.
Good Fishing, Eric
