Anglers –
November 3, 2018

Very busy times continue and will not tapper off until after Thanksgiving. Weather patterns were now more typical for the fall season, low temperatures about 70 degrees and highs near 85 degrees. North winds have become more prevalent, picking up early in the week, lightening a bit over the weekend. Ocean swells were moderate and water temperatures varied from 79 to 82 degrees. Reports of north winds stirring up currents and pushing in off colored waters.

There were various bait options now available, caballito, slabs of squid, ballyhoo, chihuil, small skipjack and miniature size sardinas being found in limited quantities near Chileno. Very heavy pressure on all bait resources this time of year, always the same situation during this time frame.

Local San Jose del Cabo fleets are fishing mainly in the vicinity of Iman and San Luis Banks.The action for yellowfin tuna was much tougher this week, through much of the week the winds created very fast drifts and made that form of drift and chum fishing that much harder. There were limited yellowfin tuna in the 40 to 90 lb. accounted for, some days they found better number of football sized tuna, white skipjack and bonito, but even the smaller grade of fish became elusive. Most days the best chances for tuna was early in the day, then very sporadic.

We did see an increase of dorado that ranged to over 20 lb. still just one or two here or there, but at least were seeing some decent respectable sized fish. Wahoo were hard to predict, as they normally can be, but these fish are definitely in the area, mainly on the grounds from Punta Gorda to Vinorama. These fish do become increasingly finicky at times of heavy concentrations of boats. Anglers were taking wahoo strikes incidentally while drift fishing for tuna, as well as on various rapalas, skirted jet heads, trap hooked chihuil, caballito and ballyhoo also were working. No wide open action, but charters were accounting for one or two of these fish when targeting these specifically. Sizes ranging from 10 to 40 lb. Local wahoo tournament is next Sunday, so we will see how that turns out, most likely a fish in the 40 to 50 lb. range will have good chance of taking home prize money.

Getting late in the season now, but some sailfish were still being hooked into, as well as some smaller sized striped marlin, heard of a 300 lb. black marlin off of Cabo San Lucas. This is now kind of in between seasons for local billfish action.

Bottom action was limited, though some anglers did catch some quality fish, amberjack, dogtooth snapper, cabrilla were the highlight, early in the day on inshore grounds further north was best chance, going after this directly and not trying to do too much in one morning. Hard to target tuna, wahoo and bottom all in the same trip.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 235 charters for the week. Anglers reported a fish count of: 9 striped marlin, 8 sailfish, 58 dorado, 41 wahoo, 155 yellowfin tuna, 145 bonito, 190 white skipjack, 18 red snapper, 14 amberjack, 13 barred pargo,16 yellow snapper, 12 dogtooth snapper, 18 cabrilla, 12 sierra, 12 roosterfish, 10 jack crevalle, 4 mullet snapper and 180 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric