January 9, 2011
Anglers –
Lighter crowds of tourists this past week as families prepare to return to their school and work routines after this holiday season. Cooler temperatures now, a couple days saw high temperatures barely reaching 70 degrees, most days were near 75 degrees, scattered cloud cover with threats of rain, which never developed. There were increased winds out of the north, the gusts were moderate compared to what we can often see at this time of year. Water temperatures are now in the 67 to 72 range, warmest areas found in the direction of San Jose del Cabo.
Anglers were able to obtain live sardinas for bait without too much trouble, schools of these baitfish were found off of Palmilla Point and north near Vinorama. It was worth any extra waiting time involved because this was the best choice for finding the variety of action now encountered closer to shore.
Fleets found the most consistent bite off of spots such as Santa Maria, Chileno, Palmilla, Punta Gorda and Iman Banks. Catches included sierra, roosterfish, yellowtail, amberjack, snapper, bonito, dorado, skipjack and a few scattered billfish. Using sardinas for surface action produced more numbers of fish, most numerous were skipack and sierra. Trolling with hoochies and rapalas worked well and jigging with yo-yo's worked for structure species such as yellowtail, amberjack, bonito and snapper. This past week saw more schooling yellowtail moving in on the inshore reefs, most of these fish were of the firecracker variety, 4 to 8 pounds, though there were a handful of larger yellows mixed in. It is the time of year when there can be great variety of smaller to medium sized fish close to shore, most all of them very good eating species.
Last week the yellowfin tuna action had slowed down due to changing ocean conditions, some schooling tuna were found further offshore traveling with porpoise, but this was hit or miss. In recent days there were signs of more yellowfin action. Palmilla Point produced some tuna up to 25 pounds, but you had to get through the aggressive skipjack first, some skippers found that using either dead bait or chunks of skipjacks drifted down deeper resulted in more percentage of tuna hook ups than skipjack.Larger sized yellowfin tuna to over one hundred pounds were holding on the Gordo and Iman Banks. The fish on the Gordo Banks were seen breezing the surface, but with all of the red crabs on these same fishing grounds they have acquired a taste for them and were not looking to feed on anything else. Though on some days there were a few tuna hooked into, one tuna of 133 pounds was landed by Dennis Powell, who is from the Lake Tahoe area and was fishing with local La Playita guide Chame Pino, the same day they lost two other quality sized tuna. The very next day on the Banks no one even saw a tuna, this is how it has been from day to day. Iman Bank was holding nice tuna as well, trolling with bolito was the ticket, if you were able to find and catch these elusive baitfish.
Dorado were being found in smaller sized schools, most of these fish under ten pounds, remember to release these juvenile fish if possible, particularly the females, which are easily identified by their smaller rounded forehead. These fish grow up to five pounds per month, better to let these fish spawn and grow for this coming spring season.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playta/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 77 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:
1 sailfish, 2 striped marlin, 46 yellowfin tuna, 122 dorado, 24 roosterfish, 315 sierra, 14 amberjack, 154 yellowtail, 8 hammerhead shark, 36 bonito, 16 cabrilla and 38 pargo.
Good fishing, Eric
