GORDO BANKS PANGAS
August 30, 2020
Tropical weather patterns continue, as do light crowds of visiting tourists. As the region was still drying out from the soaking rain left by Hurricane Genevieve, we were carefully following forecast of a pair of newly formed Tropical Storms, Hernan and Iselle. While Iselle was lurking in an area off to the west of Todo Santos, never impacting land at all, there was Hernan which originally formed off of Manzanillo and was forecast to pass just to the west of the Southern Peninsula, though early Friday this system completely reversed course and headed into the Sea of Cortez in the direction of La Paz, at the same time this storm quickly weakened and besides some isolated light to moderate rainfall it never amounted to much at all. Though there were precautionary Port closures on Wednesday & Thursday. Ocean swells did increase Thursday to about 8 feet, but wind was light and overall caused no damage at all.
Early in the week the ocean conditions were slowly rebounding, cleaner water was found further offshore. Average water temperature was in the 78 to 82 degree range. By mid-week the conditions closer to shore were looking much better and anglers reported some great action for popular gamefish species such as yellowfin tuna, dorado and wahoo. Caballito were once again available from the marina area, after becoming scarce early in the week.
Most consistent action was found around the San Luis Bank, using both lures and baits. The tuna hit on caballito and were in the 40 to 70 lb. class. There had been some much larger yellowfin tuna found associated with porpoise, but this was some 30 to 40 miles offshore and was not a normal option for local charters. Though with cleaner currents now pushing closer to shore, we expect the cow sized tuna to start to congregate on local high spots, it is that time of year.
More dorado were also now encountered inshore, mixed sizes, ranging to 20 lb. though there were more numbers of smaller sized fish. With the cleaner water we also saw the wahoo become more active on the same grounds north of Punta Gorda, several charters accounted for a couple of these speedsters, with other strikes also being missed, sized ranged from 25 to 40 lb.
Billfish action was limited with the changing conditions, though there were sailfish, striped, blue & black marlin all hooked into, with the larger billfish being lost. We expect the coming weeks will produce some of the seasons larger marlin, a lot will also depend on what weather might develop. Historically the month of September can be the most unpredictable of all.
Bottom action was limited this past week, as was inshore action, though there were a few nice sized roosterfish reported, which is very late in the season for these.
Light crowds, good fishing, Eric