Anglers –

July 15 2017
Light crowds of tourists were feeling the real heat of the summer season now, as weather patterns have stabilized, feeling more tropical, higher humidity and lighter winds. Surf conditions were larger, as a result of two distant hurricanes, Eugene and Fernanda, which formed off Southern Mexico and headed off on northwesterly tracks. No impact on land was felt, except for larger ocean swells and high humidity. Ocean temperatures have warmed up into the 82 degree range on the Sea of Cortez side, the Pacific is still slightly cooler. Water clarity has continued to improve, green water inshore is showing improvement each day.

Live bait options consisted of caballito and mullet, some chihuil and bolito were being found and used for trolling on the offshore grounds. Inshore fishing action slowed with higher surf conditions, a scattering of roosterfish and jack crevalle. Most fleets are working the grounds from Iman to the San Luis Banks, this is where the most productive all around action was encountered.

With the warming currents, the fast action for huachinango has slowed down, though there were still some to be caught, all on yo-yo jigs, off of Iman and San Luis Banks, also a mix of Eastern Pacific bonito, up to 10 lb. These were the same grounds that quality sized yellowfin tuna were schooling, not in huge numbers, but tuna in the 30 to 80 lb. range were being hooked into on a daily basis. These yellowfin were also striking the yo-yo jigs well this past week, not something they commonly do, usually they prefer various whole or cut baits. Besides striking on yo-yo jigs, these tuna also would hit while drift fishing or slow trolling baits. Most charters were having chances at least for one or two tuna, other landed as many as three of four. Many fish were lost as well, because these yellowfin were a bit line shy, most anglers were using 40 to 50 lb. leaders in order to have better chances at hooking up, resulting in a greater percentage of lost fish as well.

As the ocean water temperature has warmed back up and as the present surf swell resides, this could be the opportunity for dogtooth snapper to finally go on the bite, so far this season we have seen very limited activity from these larger of all pargo species. We did see a couple of nice sized amberjack recently, this is the time of year when we see the largest of these ambers of the season, not uncommon to see fish up to 80 lb. or more this month.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 61 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 3 striped marlin, 16 dorado, 7 amberjack, 32 bonito, 11 yellow snapper, 3 barred pargo, 89 yellowfin tuna, 13 leopard grouper, 165 huachinango, 12 jack crevalle, 24 roosterfish and 26 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric