Gordo Banks Pangas

 San Jose del Cabo

September 4, 2010

The new month of September started off with lighter crowds, but the light number of anglers in town were greeting with great yellowfin tuna action, along with super tropical humid weather conditions. There is an area of low pressure offshore of Manzanillo that is threatening to develop into something, but is taking longer than usual to reach its next stage of development. Surf has increased to around six or seven foot, creating disturbed seas, but it was calm enough for anglers to be able to fish without discomfort. Water temperatures have averaged 80 to 84 degrees throughout the area. A mix of caballito, fresh dead and live sardinas has been available most days.

The most consistent bite for the yellowfin tuna has been on the Iman Bank. Many days anglers were limiting out while drift fishing with the dead bait and by the time the live bait was delivered by the commercial pangeros, they really did not even need it. Most of these tuna were ranging in the 15 to 30 pound class, on some days there was a menacing presence of skipjack to deal with, but other days the action was pretty exclusively for the yellowfin. A few of the larger grade of tuna were in the same area. Though the best chance of hooking into a larger fish was on the Outer Gordo Banks, though there were actually more black and blue marlin accounted for than larger sized yellowfin. Several huge yellowfin tuna strikes were lost, these fish ate larger sized live baits, such as skipjack or football sized tuna.

Juan Castro from the Santa Barbara area hooked into a black marlin while trolling a small tuna on the Outer Gordo with skipper Chame Pino on the 26 ft. Super Panga, the “Killer II”. This was their second morning out targeting larger marlin or tuna, the first day they did not have any luck, even though they did see a pair of big marlin feeding. The second day they were more fortunate, things went their way. Juan landed this black marlin in a mere 28 minutes, apparently the fish became gill wrapped and quickly expired during the ensuing battle. Back at the La Playita weigh in station the black was officially weighed in at 495 pounds. Several other black and blue marlin were also landed throughout the week, most of them weighing in the 250 to 350 pounds range, the majority of them being hooked in the vicinity of the Gordo Banks.

Dorado counts continue to be below average, though this week we actually saw more of these sought after gamefish in the fish counts than during the previous week. Larger sized dorado were reported from the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas, while the majority of the dorado found in the direction of San José del Cabo and further north were juvenile sized fish of 15 pounds or less.

Off the bottom there were a mix of dogtooth snapper, cabrilla, amberjack, yellow snapper and bonito. This action was limited, though some of the ambers and dogtooth were of impressive size, with many other larger hook ups reportedly lost due to lines being cut off on the rock piles.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 49 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 4 striped marlin, 5 blue marlin, 5 black marlin, 2 sailfish, 2 wahoo, 12 pargo,

7 amberjack, 9 dogtooth snapper, 8 cabrilla, 86 dorado, 534 yellowfin tuna, 33 bonito and 332 black skipjack.

Good Fishing, Eric