Anglers –
May 28, 2016

We are still only seeing moderate crowds of tourists arriving, though we expect that when school semesters all finish there will be more families going on vacation. The weather definitely became more tropical this past week, we saw scattered cloud cover much of the morning, burning off as the days progressed, high temperatures in the upper 80s. There was some swirling gusting winds the first part of the week, the second half we saw calmer conditions, afternoon breezes picking up predominately from the south, though overall anglers emjoyed comfortably fishing conditions. Swells increased some and currents were also stronger than normal. Water temperatures ranged from 70 degrees around the corner on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas, to near 80 degrees on the Sea of Cortez side, this is where the majority of the sportfishing fleets were concentrated, From off of Chileno, to Red Hill, Cardon, La Fortuna, Iman, San Luis and Vinorama.
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Anglers found that baitfish were less plentiful this past week, not much inshore baitfish activity at all and the offshore grounds did have some small skipjack, but no reports of bolito, should start seeing more of this favored food source showing on the local fishing grounds soon. Limited supplies of caballito, moonfish, jurelito were available in the marina area and the bait vendors also were offering ballyhoo and slabs of squid.

Fishing action was slower for the first part of the week, partly because winds limited options, but later in the week we saw much improved action, particularly near the San Luis Bank, where hog sized amberjack in the 20 to 80 lb. class were accounted for, also some good wahoo action was encountered, as well as more dorado than we had previously seen. Anglers used various baits and lures, a combination of drift fishing, slow trolling and higher speed trolling all produced strikes. We saw wahoo to 50 pounds and dorado up to 25 lb. Yellowfin tuna were scattered, some hitting on squid and others while trolling smaller hoochies and Rapalas, most of the tuna landed were in the 5 to 20 lb. range. There were reports of charters landing as many as a dozen yellowfin trolling off of Red Hill, while north of Punta Gorda most boats were only finding a couple yellowfin in the their combined catch, but there was more chances at variety in that direction, particularly for finding the wahoo, dorado and amberjack.

Striped marlin were found within several miles of shore, as well as further out on their normal traditional grounds. Striking on baits as well as trolled lures, sizes ranged from 50 to 130 lb. There was an unusual story this week of a 20 ft. whale shark being seen swimming around inside the Cabo San Lucas Marina, apparently this was event never witnessed before, normally this very elusive species is encountered occasionally in the clear waters on offshore sea mounts.

Not much roosterfish action reported, though there were at least some being hooked into by hard core surf anglers, lack of inshore baitfish activity to attract more of these prized fighters. Next month is usually the prime season for these sought after gamefish.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 78 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 5 sailfish, 1 yellowtail, 28 striped marlin, 33 wahoo, 86 yellowfin tuna, 25 bonito, 26 dorado, 29 amberjack, 6 cabrilla, 15 yellow snapper, 14 sierra, 8 barred pargo, 5 parrot fish, 3 pompano and 200 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric