June 10, 2010
Moderate crowds of tourists are traveling to the Los Cabos where they are enjoying very comfortable late spring weather conditions. Cooler ocean currents off of the Pacific have been meeting with the warmer Sea of Cortez air and sea conditions creating on and off marine moisture layer, turning to fog. This pattern has cooled air temperatures, reaching highs of 85 degrees, but has also meant more wind, which there has been more than enough of this year, ranging from all directions, but more often than not starting out of the north, before turning east and in the afternoon switched directly from the south, a bit hard to predict, we are patiently waiting for more consistent weather patterns to stabilize. Ocean currents have been very strong, river like, water temperatures from Cabo San Lucas to Los Frailes are ranging from 74 to 80 degrees, with the warmest bands of water found actually within the first couple miles of shore, rather than further offshore, where currents in the low 70s are sweeping through.
The live bait situation continues to be somewhat limited, no sardinas available, larger surf conditions have not allowed the pangeros to areas where these baitfish are schooling. Mullet have not been as easy as expected to obtain, especially during periods of early morning low tides. Anglers found that caballito were the most abundant readily available baitfish. These small jacks prove to be good all around live bait, not quite like a live greenback mackerel, though yellowfin tuna, dorado, billfish, wahoo, roosterfish, snapper and others all will strike them. There were only scattered reports of giant squid being caught in recent days.
Panga charters out of San Jose del Cabo found the most consistent action during this past week in the warmer currents within a couple miles from shore from Red Hill to Punta Gorda. The main species being yellowfin tuna in the 10 to 30 pound range, at times found traveling with smaller sized spinner porpoise and often being encountered by blind strikes. Angler s had success on smaller sized cedar plugs, hoochies, Rapalas, feathers etc…, also good action on caballito once the schooling tuna were located.
A slight increase in numbers of dorado showing up, but still mainly being in small concentrations. This is now the time when we start to see more flying fish and bolito activity on the local fishing grounds, always a favorable sign. Conditions change fast during late spring, should be only a matter of time when conditions really stabilize into calmer summer seas.
With the yellowfin tuna action being the most productive fishery, more charters were concentrated in this area, though for the limited numbers of anglers that traveled further north near La Fortuna to Vinorama, they did report respectable action on wahoo and tuna. Anglers used live bait, rigged dead baits and various lures, diving Rapalas accounted for a high percentage of strikes. This was an option where preferably the weather would cooperate, because wind and swells could be a negative factor a times.
Striped marlin were now more plentiful, seen jumping, tailing and feeding, coming closer to shore in recent days, attracted by the food source and warm clean water conditions. The bite was up and down, some fish being more aggressive to feed than were others. The marlin hit on lures as well as the preferred live bait, nicer sized fish lately, reports of marlin weighing close to 200 pounds being landed and released.
The roosterfish action has been spotty and these fish appear to be showing up later than normal for the second year in a row. Dogtooth snapper action has not been steady, perhaps a factor being the lack of inshore baitfish schools. There is still time left in the season for these fish to move inshore, later in August these monster snapper typically move back outside to the rock piles rather than fight with higher surf conditions for their food source.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 79 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 8 striped marlin, 7 wahoo, 196 yellowfin tuna, 19 dorado, 24 roosterfish, 8 sierra, 8 hammerhead shark, 8 amberjack, 24 various pargo species, 13 cabrilla, 19 bonito and 22 jack crevalle.
Good Fishing, Eric
