Anglers –
October 23, 2015

Now into the third week of October, only in the last couple of days we have felt cooler temperatures into the 60s during early morning hours. Quite pleasant conditions now, actually need a sweatshirt or light windbreaker. Most sunny skies, we are expecting some more scattered cloud cover from the distant bands of Hurricane Patricia. This latest storm is turning out to be the most powerful system every recorded in either the Pacific or Atlanta. Now situated offshore of the coast, between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, Patricia has reached category five status, has sustained winds of 200 mph and gusts to 245 mph, sounds like data from a tornado. This incredibly strong storm is following a path directly towards making landfall late Friday, sure hope everyone in the path has taken necessary precautions and evacuated to safer land.

Conditions have been fine locally in Los Cabos, only a few isolated rain squalls reported through the week. Light winds in the afternoon, more breeze and swells reported on the Pacific. Ocean temperatures are still higher than average, ranging from 84 degrees on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas, to 87 degrees in the direction of San Jose del Cabo and the Sea of Cortez.

Some 121 teams participated in the world’s richest fishing tournament, the Bisbee’s Black and Blue. This season fish migration patterns are all confused, the unprecedented El Nino causing havoc. Fishing action has been far more spread out and limited, not what we would normally expect for this historically productive time frame. This year anything could happen, we might see cow sized yellowfin on the Gordo Banks during the winter time.

Local fleets have been concentrated close to shore off of Punta Gorda, with the lack of any resource for sardinas, anglers have been relying on using strips of giant squid for bait. Main species being encountered have been yellowfin tuna in the 10 to 40 lb. range. No wide open action, spotty most of the time, fish coming up in flurries, often early, then less often later on the morning. Drift fishing with the strip bait had been the most productive technique. Off the bottom in this area there was a mix of triggerfish, pompano, barred pargo and small snapper, though no significant numbers of these. An occasional dorado, wahoo, striped marlin or sailfish has rounded out the surface action.

Some charters scouted out other areas, inshore, offshore and further north, looking for possible wahoo action and others, most of these scouting trips did not produce and the best chance at getting a hook up was once again off of Punta Gorda. Most of the wahoo strikes reported in recent days were by anglers using the strips of squid off of Punta Gorda.

Blue marlin were scattered, no black marlin reported recently, a few stripers and fair numbers of sailfish, up to 100 lb. Despite limited options this past week, we do anticipate with the cooling weather patterns, that we will see water temperatures cool and a change in currents should help improve our all-around action, we look forward to a great late fall and winter season.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 128 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 3 striped marlin, 14 sailfish, 260 yellowfin tuna, 18 dorado, 6 wahoo, 16 pompano, 18 yellow snapper, 65 triggerfish, 4 sierra, 8 cabrilla, 12 barred pargo, 180 black skipjack and 16 bonito.

Good fishing, Eric