August 4th, 2024
GORDO BANKS PANGAS
We are now heading into our peak tropical storm season. Up until now, we have had a couple of storms pass just far enough off to the southwest that they have not made any major impact on Southern Baja, mostly humidity and heat. We had light showers Yesterday morning (Saturday), quickly passing and the rest of the week was mostly clear with a few windy days in between. This translates into light crowds of anglers as we continue to see slow activity throughout the panga area.
This week, we had the Bisbee’s East Cape tournament where 95 teams participated throughout 3 days of fishing. We want to congratulate our Captains Chame and Freddy who caught the overall heaviest yellowfin tuna, weighing in at 176 pounds. This tournament’s marlin winner was Team Wild Hooker with a 549-pound Black Marlin. Second place belongs to Team Quitena with a 471-pound Blue.
This week, most fleets concentrated on the inner and outer Gordos as we are starting to see more surface and bait activity. Many of the tournament boats also fished this area as a handful of big marlin were spotted in the surrounding areas. A few of our boats focused part of the early morning on fishing the bottom at the inner Gordo. A handful of big Dogtooth snappers were landed while drifting strips of skipjacks. A couple of these fish surpassed the 60-pound mark. Some captains reported losing many more as they couldn’t stop them before getting into the rock structures. Some other boats reported similar snapper activity at Vinorama and Iman Bank. There is a good chance of picking some quality red snapper and amberjack with jigs at Iman Bank earlier in the morning.
If bottom action was slower on some days, the boats started trolling marlin lures and rigged ballyhoo to target dorado and striped marlin. We are starting to see more quality sized dorado, though the numbers remain low. The striped marlin bite seems to have settled down compared to previous weeks. Many blue marlin were hooked throughout these same areas, most of them under 200 pounds. While looking for marlin and dorado, a few boats reported some wahoo strikes. One of the local pangeros landed a nice 50-pound wahoo on a marlin lure this weekend.
A few of the private boats continue to look for the schools of porpoise 35-50 miles offshore. Even though this activity has slowed down significantly, some of these boats were able to find the bigger yellowfin. Thie week, most of the yellowfin we saw were over 80 pounds.
It is now late in the season for Roosterfish, though we are still seeing a few nice ones throughout our shorelines. Some boats also reported seeing schools of big Spanish mackerel (Sierra) later in the day with live sardines.
As the fishing remains spotty on some days, we are seeing great signs that should improve fishing conditions on weeks to come.
Good Fishing, Brian
