GORDO BANKS PANGAS
August 3rd, 2025
We continue to get deeper into the tropical storm season now. We are experiencing very hot days in the low 90s that feel much hotter with high humidity and heat index levels. Up until now, we have had a series of storms passing just far enough off to the southwest that they have not made any major impact on Southern Baja. Light crowds of anglers as well, even though this past week the all-around fishing action was much improved.
The main highlight was the yellowfin tuna bite towards Iman. This bite remains consistent on live sardines and strips of squid. The sardine supply seems to remain consistent at this time as the bait guys have not reported many struggles netting them. Most of these tuna are averaging 20-25 pounds. A couple days out of the week, big schools of baby yellowfin and skipjack took over most of the area. These tuna were 2-5 pounds and had big schools of sharks, mostly pilots chasing them.
Some of the local pangeros reported nicer yellowfin tuna at Iman on strips of squid or slow trolling live bulito. The biggest tuna seen this week was 111 pounds, while other boats lost bigger fish after long 2-hour fights. A few locals also reported hooking into nicer tuna at the inner Gordo. They reported more issues with sharks at the Gordo though.
While drifting or slow trolling bait for tuna at Iman and Gordo, we saw a handful of small dorado in the mix. We also had 4 wahoo this week at the fillet table, all of them averaging 18-25 pounds. A couple of these were landed on live sardines, on circle hooks. The other 2 were hooked at 25 trolling XRaps. These wahoo came later in the day.
We also had 2 dogtooth snapper while drifting strips of skipjack at Iman. One of these was close to 50 pounds. Hard to fish the bottom most days as currents were not ideal. Even though we had strong south winds today, averaging 13-15 knots, most boats were able to make it to Iman and still land a handful of nice tuna and dorado.
Good Fishing, Brian
