Gordo Banks Pangas
San Jose del Cabo
September 13, 2009
Anglers –
Everything is back to normal this week in the Los Cabos area after the near miss of Hurricane Jimena. Areas to north were not so fortunate, this is where the storm made landfall and caused major destruction, our condolences goes out to all of the people who were affected and we wish them good luck with their rebuilding efforts. Light crowds of tourists are in town now, as is normal for this time of year. The weather has changed since the recent storm activity that brought with it much needed rainfall, the days are very humid, but overall the temperatures are slightly milder, especially early in the morning when you can now feel a hint of cool fall air, a welcome sign that seasonal change is not far off. Ocean conditions are calm once again, water temperatures ranging 79 to 84 degrees throughout most of the region, clean blue water is being found within one mile of shore. At this time there are no new storms that are threatening the area, though we are still keeping close watch on the weather forecasts, as the next several weeks is historically the time when tropical weather systems can develop rapidly in close proximity.
The fishing action picked back up to where it had been before stormy conditions arrived last week. There were good supplies of sardinas found around the Puerto Los Cabos Jetties and the baitfish were also of better size than they had been prior to the storm. The giant Humboldt squid have also returned to local waters, as anglers were jigging them up early in the morning from the deep waters of the La Laguna trench. Both the sardinas and fresh cut squid were being used as baits on the banks from Cardon to Iman for targeting yellowfin tuna and dorado. There continue to be the quality grade of yellowfin found in this area, the majority of the fish being hooked into are weighing in the 50 to 80 pound class, though there were much larger tuna being seen at times boiling on the surface. The recent passing of the full moon might have attributed to making these fish even more finicky, every day the bite varied as to if the fish would come up earlier or later and if they would prefer live or dead sardinas or fresh strips or the giant squid. Bolito baitfish proved even harder to come by, for the most part not wanting to strike on the normal small hoochies or fly rigs. Because of the average size of the tuna in this area most anglers were using leader of 40 to 80 pound in order to have better odds of landing the fish. I am sure if a person went down to 20 or 30 pound they would have much better chance of getting a strike, but then the problem is trying to actually land the fish without eventually breaking them off. Average catches per charter was about one to three tuna per morning, with at least as many or more dorado mixed in, the dorado were mostly in the 10 to 20 pound class.
The current continued to be very strong, running towards the south, this limited the bottom fishing opportunities, though anglers did account for mixed bags of Mexican bonito, huachinango (red snapper), amberjack, cabrilla and other pargo species while using baits and yo-yo jigs. One La Playita commercial pangero hauled in a 138 pound gulf grouper while using a jurelio for bait on his heavy hand line set up. A couple of larger sized black or blue marlin were hooked into around the Gordo Banks, but we did not hear of any of these fish actually being landed in recent days. There were a handful of sailfish being hooked into around the same spots where the tuna and dorado are being found. We heard of more billfish action around of the Pacific, but during the recent full moon this action also slowed down.
The combined panga fleet launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 39 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:
2 striped marlin, 2 black marlin, 7sailfish, 1 wahoo, 79 yellowfin tuna, 135 dorado, 35 bonito, 5 amberjack, 9 cabrilla and 22 various pargo species.
Good fishing, Eric
