Anglers –

March 28, 2015

The spring season is a great time of year to enjoy all that the Los Cabos Area has to offer. The climate is now ideal, lots of sunshine, low temperatures in the 60s and highs in the upper 80s. Winds can still be a bit unpredictable, though the persistent northerly winds are not nearly as relentless as during the winter months. Ocean conditions were improved, after going through a cooling trend and having clarity fluctuate. Now anglers are reporting very clean water and temperatures averaging 74 to 75 degrees. Still heavy concentrations of whales being seen, though with the progressively warming days, we expect that these whales will be migrating back north soon.

Fishing action has been changing from week to week, not an overabundance of billfish being found offshore now, no large concentrations of baitfish for these fish to feed on. Only a scattering of striped marlin, these fish had been found mainly 20 some miles offshore, but this past week we have seen marlin moving much closer to shore, traveling in the warmer clean currents, searching for a food source. Except around the certain high spots where skipjack have dominated the food chain. Bait sellers have been working hard to net sardinas in the surf zone near Vinorama, most days they were able to find sufficient supplies, though there were a few days where the combination of higher swells and early morning low tides made for dangerous navigation and resulted in limited bait resources.

It truly has been an unusual new season, changing rapidly, going from wide open yellowfin tuna action, then a complete dead drop off, then the yellowtail broke loose on the Gordo Banks, then this fell off and the action once again was on the San Luis Bank for yellowfin tuna and this week surprisingly good action for wahoo, who would figure that during the month of March we would be seeing more wahoo than sierra, which is the species of mackerel that we regularly find during this time. This year we have seen mixed up migrations for various bait and gamefish species, much better action for yellowfin tuna that we normally find during February and March, now with wahoo being another bonus catch. The yellowfin tuna are striking on sardinas near San Luis, ranging in size from 20 to 35 lb. Also a few dorado in the mix, we did see one bull of over 30 lb. brought in, that was an exception though, the majority of the dorado were smaller in size.

Last week it was the yellowtail that saved the day, now we are hooking the elusive wahoo, many on sardinas while using straight monofilament being targeted for the tuna, hard to entice a strike if usual the more visible wire leader material. Some wahoo were also hooked into while trolling with chiuil, caballito, ballyhoo or Rapalas. The average sized wahoo were in the 10 to 20 lb. a few smaller and a handful of larger fish, these fish are definitely a bonus, while other species were hard to find, the wahoo is a popular fish and can be hard to find even when they are in season, now they are biting, even though this is not the normal time of year when we would expect to find them.

Bottom fish action has not been dependable, though anglers targeting this action did find mixed success for snapper, bonito, pargo, cabrilla and yellowtail.

Inshore there has not been any consistent bite, not many sierra, considering this is now peak season for them, only small schools of roosterfish being found, most of these smaller sized, found along the stretch just south of Punta Gorda and towards the marina jetties.

Will be interesting to see what happens this coming week, nothing would surprise us at this stage, we have seen a lot of unusual patterns this year.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 62 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 5 striped marlin, 64 wahoo, 31 dorado, 55 yellowfin tuna, 18 sierra, 74 Eastern Pacific bonito, 17 cabrilla, 22 huachinango, 9 roosterfish, 18 yellowtail, 9 barred pargo and 14 yellow snapper.

Good fishing, Eric

Anglers –

March 22, 2015

We are now officially starting the spring season and progressively warming conditions are feeling actually a bit tropical. Crazy unpredictable patterns this past week, over the last weekend we saw thunderstorms develop and on Sunday there was a couple of inches of rainfall measured that fell in a matter of an hour, accompanied by heavy thunder and lightning. There was also hail storms that were associated with these thunderstorms and ice accumulated on the ground, giving people a rare chance to create ice balls. Strange to have hail falling one moment, then tropical conditions later on the same day, there were also water spouts reportedly seen offshore on the fishing grounds at the start of the week.

Last weekend the great bite for yellowfin tuna and dorado became very tough and scattered, with only a few fish being accounted for, charters were lucky to catch a few fish in combination during a morning trip. This dire situation included inshore, bottom and offshore action, things had gone from very good to slim pickings just like that. Hard to say for what reason, though the rapidly changing weather patterns and scarcity of sardinas were certainly a contributing factors. The commercial fleet were having to fight higher surf conditions along the rocky shoreline near Vinorama where the schools of sardinas were holding and on some days were not able to get any. Other bait options for anglers were caballito, ballyhoo, skipjack and chihuil. Bait situation can become tough at times, availability had been steady, now things are a bit more scattered, day to day as to what might be available..

With the weather settling back down and fleets scouting out any new opportunities, on Friday the season’s first big bite on yellowtail developed, this was on the Outer Gordo Bank, where anglers were hooking into a quality grade of yellowtail while using various from of whole and cut baits, even chunks of ballyhoo were working. These powerful jacks were all running in the 25 to 35 lb. range and testing angler’s strength, many hook ups were lost to cut lines, as these fish are known for heading directly for the rocks as soon as they feel pressure of being hooked. Some boats ended up catching as many as 5,6,7 or even more yellows.

The main species off the bottom rock piles has been the bonito, a few snapper, cabrilla, amberjack and triggerfish. Though for a few days there, the bonito did not even want to bite. There were reports of red crabs being abundant near Cerralvo Island, this created a feeding frenzy for red snapper, when these pelagic red crabs drift with the currents to the surface action can be wide open, but this can also create a situation where the gamefish only want to gorge on these red crabs and nothing else and if they do not happen to come to the surface there is no way to gather them for use as snapper bait. New season now, anything can happen from day to day, week to week, the persistent gusty northern winds seem to be tapering way down and with spring feeling now in the air we should start to see calmer and more consistent weather patterns.

Lots of whales still in the area, but with this warming trend we will probably see these mammals start to migrate back towards there northern summer feeding grounds.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 74 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 2 striped marlin, 4 wahoo, 24 dorado, 18 yellowfin tuna, 26 sierra, 185 Eastern Pacific bonito, 7 amberjack, 16 cabrilla, 23 huachinango, 11 roosterfish, 66 yellowtail, 15 barred pargo, 16 yellow snapper and 55 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric

Anglers –

March 14, 2015

The month of March is when transition time begins, seasonal changes are very unpredictable, some years we can see warmer conditions arrive early, that could be occurring now, as weather patterns could not be more favorable at the present time, clear sunny skies, highs in the low 80’s and light winds. The first wave of Spring Break vacationers are now arriving in the Los Cabos area, this coincides with the annual San Jose del Cabo traditional fiestas which start this week, popular events such as the government sponsored fishing tournament out of Puerto Los Cabos Marina and the Off Road Races at the Luis Sandoval track will both be held on Sunday. Efforts on rebuilding the panga basin of the marina have been intense for the past month and things are certainly looking much improved and completion seems to be within sight. Then the chief engineers can draw plans for even a larger project, which is reconstructing the north jetty so that a repeat of 2014 will not happen again.

Anglers reported a complete turnaround in the fishing action, as last week conditions had been cool and the action slowed to nearly a standstill. Now, with this warming trend the yellowfin tuna and dorado bite has really improved. Local fleets have been finding great action near the San Luis Bank, with live sardinas being readily available from the commercial pangeros, who are finding these baitfish schooling inshore near Vinorama.

Drift fishing over the bottom structure in about 150 feet of water with fly lined baits has producing good numbers of yellowfin tuna in the 20 to 30 pound range. Dorado have been roaming around on the same grounds, most of these fish are running in the 10 to 15 lb. class. Even a few wahoo in the mix, with some 15 to 25 lb. wahoo landed while using straight mono leaders targeted for the tuna and dorado. Other wahoo also were taken on trolled lures, as well as on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas.

Sierra action seemed to have slowed some, maybe the warmer 74 degree current is a factor. Bottom drops over rocky structure have produced sporadic action for bonito, a variety of pargo species, cabrilla and triggerfish. Not much going on in the way of yellowtail, though reports from Southern California of epic yellowtail action on large sized fish has been almost unprecedented, possibly another el Nino in the works.

Striped marlin have continued to be spread out, though the Pacific produced more catches than in the direction of the Sea of Cortez, unpredictable as to what is going to happen this season, bait migrations are shifting according to ocean temperatures as well.

The annual migration of whales is now in full swing, scores of humpback and gray sightings. We were all reminded this week of the power that these mammals have, earlier in the week tragedy struck on a tour boat out of Cabo San Lucas, when they accidently collided with a whale and one passenger was killed in the event, a Canadian woman. These magnetic animals are wild and must be given space. Our condolences go out to everyone involved in this accident.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 66 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 1 striped marlin, 8 wahoo, 88 dorado, 215 yellowfin tuna, 18 sierra, 95 Eastern Pacific bonito, 8 amberjack, 22 cabrilla, 16 huachinango, 8 roosterfish, 18 barred pargo, 24 yellow snapper triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric