October 27, 2012
Anglers –

The Los Cabos area is now bustling with visiting anglers, this is peak fall season, weather conditions are once again ideal, after last week’s deluge from Hurricane Paul, the horizon remains clear, days have been sunny, cooler early in the morning, but by afternoon temperatures warm to 85 degrees. Over 700 anglers participated in this year’s Bisbee Black and Blue event, look for many stories to be told, as there is always some sort of drama involved. Sportfishing charters are traveling in all directions now, from the Pacific grounds to Los Frailes, in search of that special catch of a lifetime.

There are more persistent winds now starting to blow out of the north, typical fall conditions, maybe a bit earlier than normal. This combined with shorter daylight hours has also contributed to a cooling trend for the ocean, now averaging about 80 degrees outside of Cabo San Lucas and up to 82/84 degrees in the direction of the Sea of Cortez.

This annual cooling trend of local ocean currents is what usually triggers the elusive wahoo into becoming more active. We have seen more wahoo in recent days, still not a wide open bite, but considering the heavy pressure and still slightly off colored post storm waters, there has been some decent action found for these speedsters. Some charters reported as many as a half of dozen strikes and up to four wahoo landed. The ‘hoo were striking various baitfish, as well as trolled skirted lead heads or Rapalas. Most of the wahoo landed were in the 20 to 40 pound class, there were some small juveniles mixed in, nice gesture to release these, also there were at least several wahoo over 50 pounds accounted for. We look for this action to peak during the next couple of months, wahoo typically stay in the Southern Baja area until the ocean temperatures drop into the lower 70 degree range, which on a warm water year can be into January.

This past week started off with a flurry of big yellowfin tuna being landed off of the Gordo Banks, there were several fish in the 250 pound class weighed in, with others in the 100 to 230 lb. range. There were reports of a couple of super cows over 300 pounds accounted for by private sportfishers. There has been a better chance now at hooking into a big tuna as a big marlin, which are the species that tournament teams are searching for, only marlin weighing over 300 pounds count in the Bisbee Jackpot. The yellowfin were striking on chunk bait, sardinas, chihuil, skipjack and cocinero. The tuna bite slowed during the heavy pressure of the Bisbee, this next week will be the time WON Tuna Jackpot teams search out and plan strategy for the big Tuna event slated for the second week of November, looks like this year our local teams will have an advantage, having the knowledge of how to fish the Gordo Banks when the fish become spooked form heavy boat pressure.

Normal everyday charters have been fishing off of Santa Maria for a combination of skipjack, yellowfin tuna, dorado and wahoo, this action is all within several miles of shore. The yellowfin tuna have had to battle the aggressive skipjack to reach the bait, most of the yellowfin in this area have been 10 to 15 pounds, striking on sardinas. Dorado and wahoo are also hitting baits, as well as lures being trolling around the perimeter of the charters that were drift fishing with bait. The Iman Bank was another popular area being concentrated on, slightly larger grade of yellowfin, up to 25 pounds, with skipjack, dorado and wahoo in the vicinity. There has been only an occasional amberjack, cabrilla or dog snapper off the bottom.

The bait situation for obtaining live sardinas always become stressed during this busy period, on some days the commercial netters found sardinas off of the PLC Marina jetties, but this has not been as consistent as the sources found from Palmilla towards Santa Maria, this situation has a direct bearing on which direction the boats launching out of La Playita can practically reach once they do secure their daily bait rations.

The combined panga fleets out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina, sent out approximately 212 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
7 sailfish, 2 striped marlin, 42 wahoo, 165 dorado, 512 yellowfin tuna,10 amberjack, 3 dogtooth snapper,18 pargo, 6 sierra and 1600 skipjack .

Good Fishing, Eric

October 21, 2012
Anglers –

Crowds of visiting anglers are increasing daily, all are arriving anticipating the exciting tournament season in Los Cabos. We were fooled over last weekend by a storm system which developed into Hurricane Paul. This late season front appeared to be harmlessly headed off to the west, but turned back towards land and caused havoc throughout the Baja Peninsula. Southern Baja received substantial rainfall on Monday and especially on Tuesday morning, along with wind gusts to 40 mph, Los Cabos was fortunate, as this was from the backside of Paul, other areas to north suffered much more damage. Ports were closed for Monday and Tuesday, with operations resuming on Wednesday morning. Once again road crews are working overtime to clean up the mess from flooding.

Swells peaked at about 4 meters on Tuesday morning, but with each passing day ocean conditions are settling and clarity is improving, water had become very murky from the desert run off. Blue water is being reported again and we expect action to improve as conditions rebound. Ocean water temperatures are now averaging 85 to 87 degrees. Baitfish have become more scattered after the recent storm passed through. Sardinas were now being found most commonly off of the beaches from Palmilla to Santa Maria.

Before the storm there had been a great bite for yellowfin tuna off of the Cabeza Ballena and Santa Maria area. The tuna were mostly in the 10 to 15 pound range, with lots of skipjack mixed in and a few dorado. These fish would hit on trolled rapala or hoochies, but the live sardinas were the best bet for really getting into the fast action. The fishing grounds north of Punta Gorda were starting to feel some affect from north winds, pushing baitfish down and stirring up the water, with the live sardinas being in the other direction, this is when the bite off of Santa Maria came to life last week, very fun action on light tackle for the football model yellowfin tuna, though the skipjack proved to be even too numerous to deal with at times.

On Wednesday, the first day fleets resumed charter operations, even though live sardinas were scarce, there were good numbers of yellowfin caught off of Santa Maria, the bite had picked right off from how it had been pre-storm. However the next day, Thursday, the skipjack completely dominated the action and most people never even saw a tuna, besides scores of the feisty skipjack there was an average of one dorado per boat was accounted for. We do expect to see the larger tuna to become active once again on the Gordo Banks.

With offshore conditions once again quickly improving, we are anticipating some great action to develop just in time for the crowds of anxious anglers to take advantage of. Next week is the Bisbee Black and Blue event, the granddaddy of all billfish tournaments in the world, will be interesting to follow all of the story lines that develop from this year’s jackpot.

This was a rain shortened week, then we were dealing with murky water conditions that slowed down the action, we are now just waiting for things to get back on track and hoping that we have no more rainfall for a while. Weather is great now, cooler mornings, with warm sunny days and no new storm on the horizon.

The combined panga fleets out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina, sent out approximately 108 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
2 sailfish, 3 striped marlin, 4 wahoo, 11 amberjack, 15 pargo, 8 sierra, 112 dorado, 1250 skipjack and 850 yellowfin tuna.

Good Fishing, Eric

October 13, 2012
Anglers –

We are seeing larger crowds of anglers arriving daily, as this is now the start of the peak fall season, time when weather patterns stabilize, fishing is great and there is much excitement with the many high stake tournaments just around the corner. Weather is more comfortable now, mornings actually have a slight chill to them, days are clear and warm and breezes are predominately from the north. Ocean water temperature is ranging from 85 to 88 degrees, warmest areas in the direction of San Jose del Cabo. There is a low pressure system forming to the south at this time, but it looks as though it will head west and stay clear of the Baja Peninsula. There has been a trend for the last few years that late season storms have developed later in October, with the water being so warm, anything could happen, we will hope that they stay clear of impacting our area.

Fleets are fishing in all directions, off of San Jose the best areas have been either around the Iman Bank or on the Gordo banks, though in recent days there has been a bite developing from Palmilla to Santa Maria. Most common species being found are dorado and yellowfin tuna, with a few sailfish, wahoo and miscellaneous bottomfish mixed in. There have been sardinas available, some days north near Vinorama and also now being found off of Palmilla Point, this has opened up more options of where charters can plan to concentrate their efforts. Lots of boat pressure in all directions now and we have seen up to a couple of dozen East Cape area cruisers making the long run south to fish on the Iman Bank, which must mean that there has not been much action going on in their local waters.

The yellowfin tuna bite has been up and down, lots of skipjack mixed in and also some pesky aggressive sea lions to deal with. Most of the yellowfin near Iman and towards Santa Maria have been in the 10 to 20 lb. range, the larger tuna are hanging around the Gordo Banks, everyday there have been a handful of fish accounted for that have been in the 100 to 200 plus pound range, at times biting early and other days preferred to come up and feed late in the day, no big numbers, but there is a chance at a very large yellowfin, these fish have been hitting on larger sized whole baits, as well as on drifted chunk bait. Many stories were told of big fish being lost.
Average catches per day on the smaller grade of tuna found closer to shore while using sardinas for bait varied from one or two fish on as many as 15 fish per boat. Action varied from each location every day, depending on bait supply, sea lion problem and the aggressive skipjack.

Dorado were more numerous on a daily basis, heard of some fast action on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas and there were quite a few dorado around the Iman area as well, most of the dorado were medium sized, 5 to 20 pounds, a few exceptions of larger bulls accounted for. Once found these fish would readily strike on lures and bait. Remember to respect the two fish limit per person for dorado, also try to release as many of the smaller fish as possible, particularly the females, easily identified by their rounded forehead, versus the squared off heads of the males. These fish start to spawn as juveniles and grow up to five pounds a month, important to conserve the future of this fishery.

Not much being found off the bottom recently, perhaps the water temperature is too warm and the fish are hiding in the structure or seeking out deeper cooler areas, hard to say what is going on, a few amberjack, snapper, cabrilla, triggerfish and even a couple of yellowtail and roosterfish hanging over the rock piles.

Wahoo are started to show, every day we are seeing a few of them brought in, some hitting on lures, such as Rapalas, others are striking on baits in the same area where the tuna and dorado are found, Many of the wahoo have been smaller than what we normally see, though some of them were up to 30 pounds.

Billfish action has been spread out, we know of one nice black marlin that was lost on the Gordo Banks, hear about more blue marlin showing off of Cabo San Lucas, off of San Jose’s grounds there have been a few sailfish and striped marlin encountered. Lots of skipjack on the grounds and with the football sized tuna around, we do expect to see some more black and blue marlin to appear.

The combined panga fleets out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina, sent out approximately 202 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
11 sailfish, 3 striped marlin, 17 wahoo, 2 yellowtail, 12 amberjack, 18 pargo, 6 sierra, 7 roosterfish, 440 dorado, 585 yellowfin tuna and 5 rainbow runners.

Good Fishing, Eric