GORDO BANKS PANGAS
November 9th, 2025

The annual largest tournaments are now over, though the busy fall season continues. For us, this was one of the most productive weeks of the year, so far. Great action and great weather, plus whales are starting to show in our fishing grounds.

We have had a great run on wahoo for the last 2 weeks. We did not see consistent action like this last year. We are hoping that the hot wahoo bite continues throughout the rest of November and December. Most of our captains are trolling X-Raps, DTXs, and rigged ballyhoo first thing in the morning and then transitioning into slow trolling live chiwilis, if we can catch them. Most days, we are seeing plenty of them. We are hand lining these baits and using tuna veins as our chum line. Throughout the week, many boats were coming in with 2-5 wahoo almost every day, while still losing many other strikes. On average, we are landing 30% of strikes. As you know, getting a good hook set on these wahoo is challenging due to their bony and scissor sharp mouths. One of our boats landed 10 wahoo on Wednesday; the captain reported losing at least another 15, all on live chiwlis. The most productive grounds for wahoo were Iman, La Fortuna and 25. Surprisingly, we did see more dorado this week, most of them in the 15–25-pound range. These dorado were caught on chiwili while looking for wahoo, a couple of them on ballyhoo.

While slow trolling chiwili for wahoo, a handful of 40-50 pound tuna were also caught in the same area, though there was not much tuna action to report at Iman. Earlier in the week, we did see the small football tunas come up, though the live sardine supply was limited. Around mid-week, we did not have any live sardines available; we mostly used squid and dead sardines. Even though Iman’s tuna bite was hit or miss, we did get a few nice tuna while drifting dead sardines and squid. The better tuna bite came from Inner and Outer Gordo. 

The Tuna Jackpot tournament on Thursday and Friday definitely added extra pressure as many boats concentrated in the areas of both Gordos. Many of our captains participated in this tournament. Congratulations to team North Star with Captain Romelio (our local bait guy) for winning first place with a 253-pound yellowfin. Captain Chuy and Jerry had the third heaviest tuna at 190 pounds, though they were knocked out of the big prices as the winning teams were in all jackpots. These big tuna came from both Gordos. Most teams reported landing a handful of tuna, though most of them were under the 120-pound mark. Same situation with targeting wahoo; most teams were able to land them each day of the tournament, though they were in the 30–40-pound range.

Good Fishing, Brian

GORDO BANKS PANGAS
November 2nd, 2025

We are now in the midst of our busy season. Crowds of anglers are arriving to take advantage of great angling opportunities now available as we are seeing action-packed days within 15 miles from our marina. The climate is almost perfect now with sunny days in the low to mid 80s and mornings in the low 70s.

Live sardines were a challenge to start the week. We were forced to fish with squid and bait that we made out on the fishing grounds (skipjack, bulito, and chiwili). Even though we did not have sardines to start the week, we had great action on the other baits mentioned above. On Thursday, we started to see schools of live sardines close to our shorelines and rock structures. This weekend, we had good size live sardines which contributed to a hot tuna weekend bite.

Overall, this week produced great fishing action; wahoo and tuna were the highlights of the week. The wahoo were biting good towards San Luis, Iman, La Fortuna, and 25. Most of the bites came around the Iman area.  These were good quality wahoo in the 25–30-pound range, with many surpassing the 40-pound mark. The biggest wahoo this week was a 67-pounder caught on live chiwili. These wahoo strikes came on X-Raps, Nomad DTXs, ballyhoo, chiwili, and some even on live sardines while fishing for tuna. Some boats managed to land 3-4 wahoo in one day, while still losing a few others close to the boat. Mant captains reported schools of wahoo chasing sardines and swimming with the chum line while drifting bait for tuna.

At Iman, the tuna bite was hit or miss throughout most part of the week. This weekend was much better at Iman as we had live sardines. We were able to bring more tuna up to the surface. Most of the tuna at Iman were on the smaller side, 10-30 pounds, though we did see quite a few over the 40-pound mark. Only a handful of dorado came to the fillet tables, caught within the same area while fishing for tuna. Not a lot of bottom action to report, only a few snapper and grouper in the mix this week.

We had a good tuna bite at the inner and outer Gordo. These tuna hit on live sardines, strips of squid, chunks of tuna, chiwili, and live bulito/small skipjacks. We saw nice tuna in the range of 50-140 pounds.  The biggest tuna brought in this week came in at 185 pounds. We did hear reports from private boats of 220–250-pound fish in the same area. It should be an interesting Tuna Jackpot tournament coming up on Thursday.

Long days at the fillet station and clients having to buy extra coolers, not a bad problem to have!

GORDO BANKS PANGAS
October 26th, 2025

The Bisbee’s tournaments are officially done, and our captains are desperately waiting for the Tuna Jackpot tournament on November 6^th. Unfortunately, none of our captains brought any fish to the scales this past Bisbee’s. Most of the blues and blacks they caught were in the range of 200-250 pounds. In fact, most of the marlin in this tournament were not qualifying fish. Congratulations to team Magic Touch on taking home $2.4 million. This team landed a 344-pound blue on Thursday and a 459-pound blue (heaviest of the tournament) on Friday.

Because of this tournament, our marina in San Jose was a ghost town Wednesday through Friday; we only had a couple charters per day (very unusual for our busiest time of the year). Because most of the bait guys focused on the big tournament boats, our live sardine supply was also low. We only had a couple of bait guys distributing to the pangas. We are hoping to see the bait situation back to normal next week.

Early in the week, our fleet focused on Vinorama and San Luis area. We saw a consistent tuna bite, though some days big skipjack schools would take over the area. Most of the yellowfin we caught were on the smaller side, between 5 and 10 pounds. We did see 5 tuna in the range of 45 to 80 pounds coming from this area. For bait, live/dead sardines and strips of squid were the go-to. We also saw a few small dorado   in the mix. We only saw a handful of wahoo at the fillet table this week. We had boats specifically try for wahoo, though most of them were not successful. On Wednesday, one boat did land 3 wahoo covering the grounds from Vinorama to 25 (no other boats caught wahoo this day).

On Wednesday and Thursday, we noticed the tuna bite slow down significantly at Vinorama and San Luis. Many tournament boats were trying to catch small yellowfin to troll for big marlin. At one point, some captains reported upwards of 40 boats at the Vinorama area. Because of this, many boats started fishing Iman. The tuna bite slowed down towards the end of the week as we were only seeing 2 to 5 per boat this Saturday and Sunday.

Some boats were able to salvage their day by landing one or two dogtooth snapper. They used chunks of skipjack for bait. The current was a bit tricky this week as some days the bait would go straight down and others, the current made it impossible to drift efficiently. One boat landed a 25-pound rainbow runner while slow trolling a live bulito. This was quite the surprise as we tend to see rainbows under 5 pounds in our area.

Good Fishing, Brian