GORDO BANKS PANGAS
July 7th, 2024
We are now in the heat of the summer and starting to feel the high humidity. Distance tropical storms and hurricanes are increasing the humidity and overall heat index in the area. Light crowds of anglers now, though there are quite a few families at local resorts as they celebrated the 4th of July in Los Cabos. We experienced slight ocean swells and a few windy days this week. Most of the week, the North wind started picking up around midday and transitioned into South wind later in the afternoon, which gave us a nice breeze throughout the hot days.
Overall, fishing action was decent on most days. Live bait supplies consisted mainly of caballito, mullet, live sardines, and some moonfish. Most of the boats took frozen ballyhoo as they came in handy to target striped marlin, dorado, and wahoo.
We saw some nice bottom action, though it was difficult on some days due to the high currents. The best bottom action came from San Luis and Vinorama Banks where some boats were able to land quality amberjack, grouper, and a variety of snapper (red, yellow, bared, dogtooth). The bigger ones were landed on live bait, mostly caballito and mullet; most of the red snapper and amberjack were hooked on jigs earlier in the morning. A few other boats started fishing inner Gordo’s rock structure. Though there are still many sharks in the area, a few quality fish were landed while drifting live baits on the bottom, such as yellowtail, amberjack, and grouper.
A few wahoo were landed at Vinorama while fast trolling rigged ballyhoo. On Thursday, one of the private boats landed 2 wahoo, one weighing 89.6 pounds and the other one around 40 pounds. Other boats reported losing a few others strikes that same day. Other than that, we did not hear of anymore wahoo throughout the week.
Heading further offshore, anywhere from 5 to 20 miles out, anglers were finding fair chances at hooking into striped marlin and dorado. Some of the bigger boats reported hooking into a few small blue marlin as well, most of them under 200 pounds. Some scattered dorado on these same grounds, most of these were small juveniles under 8 pounds, though we did see some nicer ones closer to 15-18 pounds.
On most days, some of the local pangeros are targeting yellowfin tuna while looking for porpoise, anywhere from 30-45 miles out. This has been hit or miss, a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Some of these pangas, if lucky, were able to land double digits with most of these fish averaging 20-40 pounds. We did hear of a 200 pounder landed on Friday within the same porpoise schools.
Closer to shore, we are still catching quality size roosterfish and big jack crevalle.
Good Fishing, Brian
