GORDO BANKS PANGAS
September 14th, 2025
Most of our boats focused in the areas of San Luis, Iman, 25, and La Fortuna. Our main focus was yellowfin tuna and dorado, though the numbers were hit or miss throughout the week. Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday were good tuna days. Most of the tuna were caught at Iman and San Luis on live sardines and strips of squid. The nicer 20–40-pound tuna came on squid, though we did not see many in this size range. It was mostly the smaller tuna (5-10 pounds) on live sardines. We also had a handful of dorado in the same area. Most of these dorado were small, averaging 6-8 pounds, a few 10-12 pounders in the mix. This weekend, most boats reported having issues with sharks at San Luis and Iman.
The highlight this week was a decent wahoo bite throughout the areas of La Fortuna, 25, and Iman. On Friday, one of our boats focused specifically on wahoo and they were able to land 3, while losing 3 more. Throughout the week, we saw other boats that had 1-3 wahoo in the same areas. Most strikes came on X-Raps and Nomad DTXs. The average wahoo size was around 25 pounds. We did see a few 40-45 pounders as well. While trolling for wahoo, some boats also caught dorado, striped marlin, and sailfish (on rigged ballyhoo and lures). This wahoo bite was scattered throughout morning times as some boats caught them as early as 6:30 and others landing a few after 11:00 am. We have not trolled live caballitos and chiwilis in these areas yet. Some of the boats saw schools of chiwilis come up while drifting bait at Iman. We will most likely be focusing on trolling live baits in the upcoming weeks.
To add to the mix, we had good bottom action throughout these areas. Many of our guys focused on bottom this week and tried multiple spots, from San Luis, 25, La Fortuna, and Inner Gordo. We had a good mix of snapper (barred, yellow, dogtooth, and mullet), grouper, and amberjack. We had one grouper come in at 80 pounds. Most of these were caught on chunks and strips of skipjack. We are catching skipjack on the fishing grounds with jigs and sardines. A couple of grouper and 1 amberjack were reported on jigs. One 15-pound rainbow runner was caught while drifting bait.
A 250-pound tuna was landed at the outer Gordo on Thursday while trolling a big skipjack in the hunt for a big marlin. They had 100#mono and #300 leader, allowing them to put extra drag. They landed this fish in less than an hour. On Saturday, one of the bigger private sportfishers landed a massive black marlin a few miles out from Iman on a live skipjack. They hooked this marlin within 5 minutes of slow trolling. This fish ended up dying throughout the 3-hour fight, estimated at around 750 pounds.
Good Fishing, Brian
