June 29, 2013

Anglers –

The summer season has just begun and on the Eastern Pacific we have already seen the third named tropical storm, as this week Hurricane Cosme developed off the coast of Manzanillo, before heading on a westerly path, coming within 300 miles of Cabo San Lucas and quickly encountered cooler water causing it to dissipate, never did threaten land. We never did feel more than a few sprinkles of rain, though the ocean swells quickly rose up to fifteen feet high on Tuesday and Wednesday, before residing on Thursday and Friday. Local ports of Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Los Cabos were closed to all boating activities, red flag conditions, by late Thursday morning the ports were reopened for operations.

This latest storm system brought in more tropical and humid weather, high temperatures were staying in the 80s, mild for this time of year, thick marine haze, almost fog, has been hanging over the Southern Peninsula and Pacific breezes are keep conditions comfortable. Anglers had encountered turned over inshore water conditions prior to this recent storm, which stirred things up even more and it could be a while before the water cleans and warms back up. In the mean time more consistent action was being found offshore, in the direction of the warmer currents north of the Gordo Banks and towards Los Frailes. This is where sportfishing charters have been finding decent numbers of striped marlin, a few sailfish and dorado also on these same fishing grounds. Offshore trolling with lures, looking for signs of activity, seeing some marlin on the surface and taking blind strikes by a few larger sized dorado that are starting to move into the area, also a few wahoo in the mix. Dorado to over 40 pounds were accounted for, just there are no numbers to speak of yet, though if you happened to encounter any type of floating debris you could be in for a wide open bite. This is definitely the time of year where anything could happen on any given day.

The epic roosterfish action that had been happening close to shore has come to a standstill as the water temperatures fell, water turned greenish and baitfish scattered. There is warmer water near 80 degrees now on the offshore grounds towards the north. The inshore rock outcroppings from Cardon to Vinormama have produced some quality sized amberjack, weighing up to 80 pounds, these fish are striking on surface trolled live baits, preferably moonfish, mullet or caballito. Shallow water areas of less than 50 ft., these fish migrate close to shore during this early part of summer, searching for congregated baitfish, also these are the same rock piles that hold dogtooth snapper and various grouper, good luck keeping them away from the rocks after hooking up. These are fragile reefs, susceptible to heavy boat pressure, not an area where the entire fleet can successfully target, with increased tourism and local population there is added pressure, additionally there are many more spear fishermen targeting these easily accessible spots. This is now the peak season for this inshore fishery, within several weeks this action typically would start to shift onto the deeper, more spread out rocky structure, such as the Iman and San Luis Banks, these grounds are much larger and can handle more pressure.

The combined panga fleet launching out of Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 58 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of, 1 wahoo, 25 striped marlin, 13 dorado, 16 amberjack, 12 pargo colorado, 10 yellow snapper, 6 dogtooth snapper, 14 cabrilla, 15 jack crevalle, 5 hammerhead sharks, 4 sierra and 12 roosterfish.

Good fishing, Eric