June 1, 2013

Anglers –

This past week, over the Memorial Day Holiday, we saw increased crowds of tourists in Los Cabos, everyone was greeted with pristine weather conditions, sunny days, with high temperatures in the upper 80s and enough Pacific breeze to keep things perfectly comfortable. Warmest ocean currents are now found north of Chileno, towards Gordo Banks and Vinorama, where it is now up to 75 degrees of more, while towards the south and around the corner from Cabo San Lucas, water temperatures were dipping into the 60s, quite a dramatic variance within such a short distance.

Despite the daily patterns still being unpredictable and inconsistent, anglers found very respectable fishing action. Offshore the main action has been for striped marlin, concentrated in areas from 5 to 15 miles offshore, outside of the Gordo Banks has been one of the more productive area in recent days, the striped have ranged to over 150 lbs. and many charters were accounting for two or three billfish per day. These fish were readily striking lures, with all of the squid now present in local waters, they are chasing the squid type lures aggressively. The stripers are also striking on trolled ballyhoo, caballito and bolito. Not many dorado being reported, though everyday a handful of 10 to 30 lb. dorado have been accounted for from these same fishing grounds. No yellowfin tuna or wahoo to report, though one nice yellowfin was hooked into from a panga while trolling a larger baitfish near San Luis Banks, the fish was quality sized apparently and came unbuttoned at color. A few wahoo were seen free swimming over the inshore rocky areas where panga charters were looking for various species, but none of these ‘hoo were hooked into. With the way the ocean conditions is really coming into prime shape, anything could happen on any given day.

With the striped marlin being the only consistent catch offshore at this time, many of the charters, particularly the panga fleets, are concentrating close to shore and near the shallow water rock piles. Along the sandy beach stretches anglers got into some great roosterfish action, as the season is reaching its peak early and is now going wide open, prospects are excellent for the next month for these prized gamefish. Slowing trolling with caballito has been the best bet recently, though we will start seeing more mullet activity very soon. Roosterfish to over 50 pounds were landed throughout the week, many of the fish were ranging in the 15 to 25 lb. class. Everyone needs to remember these are a fast growing prized fighting gamefish species, which are not renowned for their eating qualities and they should be treated with care after being landed, while being photographed and released to mature and fight another day.

Other inshore action found over the rocky reefs towards the less populated northern beaches included leopard grouper, dogtooth snapper, pargo colorado and amberjack. All of these fish are powerful fighters and excellent eating, striking on various baitfish, most of time slowly trolled on the surface, tricky to hook and even harder to keep them from reaching the rocky reefs and cutting leaders off, fun to try though, can be frustrating and rewarding at the same time. This is a seasonal fishery lasting from mid May through June, then much of the action switches back on to the deeper structure.

As we progress into late spring, early summer season, we expect to see more pelagic exotics appear in the fish counts, such as yellowfin tuna, wahoo, dorado, sailfish and blue marlin. This weekend is the national holiday of ”Dia de La Marina” and there will be capacity packed crowds of locals attending all of the events scheduled in La Playita, starting with the crowning of the fiesta princess, to all night dances, carnival rides, dorado fishing tournament with beach angling categories as well, also there are off road vehicle races planned on Sunday in the San Jose Arroyo, of course lots of beer drinking and fun times for al,.

The combined local panga fleets launching from La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 105 charters this past week and anglers reported a fish count of:

3 sailfish, 28 striped marlin, 1 wahoo, 2 mako shark, 8 yellowtail, 27 amberjack, 2 golden leopard grouper, 23 cabrilla, 15 dorado, 23 yellow snapper, 92 pargo colorado,12 sierra,

14 bonito, 11 pompano, 39 dogtooth snapper, 26 jack crevalle and 188 roosterfish.

Good fishing, Eric