GORDO BANKS PANGAS

August 16, 2020

Now into mid-August, feeling more tropical with each passing day, increased scattered cloud cover, humidity and very warm conditions. Another week of light crowds of visitors, will be the same pattern now until the fall season starts in October. At this time there is much increased tropical storm activity in the Eastern Pacific. Now situated off to the south west of Southern Baja is T.S. Fausto, we mainly felt higher humidity, but also some isolated rain showers were reported Saturday, not much increase in ocean swells. Though a much larger system is now forming off mainland Mexico, below Manzanillo, forecast to become a major Hurricane, named Genevieve. This storm is forecast to pass within 300 miles of Cabo San Lucas as it heads northwest, we do expect high storm swells, to possibly 25 ft., also most likely Port closures for Wed. and Thur., though still hard to predict exactly what will happen.

For the most part the winds had settled down, though on Saturday they picked up, gusting from the south, this has been a scenario of the past couple of months, just as water clarity improves, we have set backs again. This is the time of year where typically we find blue water within a mile or two of shore, has been a bit more stirred up this season, unpredictable from day to day. Caballito has been the main bait being offered from the marina area, though last week there limited amounts of smaller sized sardinas appearing. Angers have also been using yo-yo style jigs off of the various high spots, where the more consistent grounds were from San Luis to Vinorama, better looking water on these grounds, Ocean temperatures are averaging 80 degrees or more, once clarity stabilizes we should see much improved gamefish action on these local grounds.

Most charters were concentrating on areas north of Punta Gorda, cleaner currents were found in this direction. Working the bottom rock piles produced a wide variety of catches, much of this on yo-yo jigs, but also on bait. We saw amberjack to 50 lb., dogtooth snapper, red snapper (huachinango), pompano, barred pargo, yellow snapper, leopard and broomtail grouper, bonito and black skipjack.

We also saw more yellowfin tuna action on these same grounds, still spotty, but numbers were greater than in previous weeks, average size tuna were 40 to 65 lb., many of these were also taken on yo-yo jigs versus live bait. A few much larger yellowfin tuna were hooked into while using baits such as bolito, found on the same grounds and then slowly trolled. Also there were sightings of large black marlin, one of which speared a tuna that was being reeled to the boat, following it in and making for a show under the panga, before leaving the tuna and disappearing.

There were a handful of dorado and wahoo also reported, no big numbers or particular hot spot yet to find these fish.

Along the coastal shoreline we are still seeing good numbers of mixed sized roosterfish, as well as jack crevalle and a few nice pargo. Late season now for this inshore action and the arrival of large storm swells could put an end to this action.

Much further offshore there were reports of medium sized yellowfin tuna being found associated with traveling porpoise, also a few blue marlin hooked into.

Light crowds, good fishing, Eric