GORDO BANKS PANGAS

September 20, 2020

Entering the fall season now, for the Los Cabos region this is the most tropical period, high humidity, scattered very tropical cloud cover and always a chance at isolated rain showers. Not many tourists now, as this is normally a slack time for travelers, even more so this year due to Covid 19, in another few weeks the area will become much busier, high stakes tournament time. The entire month has been very quiet in the Eastern Pacific for tropical storms, though the Atlantic has been a different story. Almost eerie, how it is so quiet now, there is a distance low pressure system, developing far to the south, forecast to strengthen some as it heads off to the west. With local ocean temperatures now as high as 88 degrees, still high possibilities that if conditions become favorable, powerful storms can develop quickly and in close proximity.

For the few anglers that were in town, they enjoyed mostly flat calm seas with minimal breeze, with the exception over the weekend when passing storm clouds kicked up winds, creating choppy seas, but as clouds passed through, seas calmed down again, no rain was reported, higher mountain areas had some isolated rain squalls. Extended forecast say that these calm tropical conditions will remain similar for next ten days, hopefully they are right.

Main bait now be offered are sardinas and slabs of squid. This is what the better action was found on. Yellowfin tuna has been the most common gamefish being targeted, the tuna have been found from the Gordo Banks, north to Vinorama, Iman Bank was one of the more popular areas this week. Boats from the north, East Cape, are arriving on these same grounds, adding to the concentrated pressure. Early bite was particularly good for yellowfin, which have been in the 10 to 80 lb. range, average fish 40 to 60 lb. Larger cow size tuna were seen, proved to be finicky, quickly disappearing, though they are in the area and with these calm conditions, the ocean is becoming riper for wide open action to break loose. Boats now were averaged one or two tuna, or sometimes up to five or six, depending exactly where you happened to be.

Not as many dorado or wahoo being found, though they are in the area and some were accoutered for, most of the dorado were small fish, have not seen any large bulls recently, the few wahoo we have seen were in the 20 to 35 lb. class. Minimal bottom action, mixed species, a few quality fish, amberjack to 45 lb., one 65 lb. dogtooth snapper, barred pargo, bonito, pargo cororado and one black sea bass by local commercial pangeros, about 70 lb.

Last weekend and the first part of this past week, there were a handful of black marlin hooked into, most of these from the vicinity of the Gordo Banks and while trolling skipjack or bolito baits. At least three blacks were landed and brought in, they ranged in sizes from 340 lb. to close to 500 lb. Several sailfish and striped marlin also were reported.

Light crowds, good fishing, Eric