Anglers –
June 11, 2016

This past week was dominated by the weather conditions, more than by the light crowds of anglers getting into some fast and furious fishing action. After last Sunday being a great day, as forecast, we saw high pressure systems from the north, coinciding with low pressure areas from the south created the perfect environment for the south wind to develop and be persistent for four straight days, finally residing by Friday. Winds blew steady at 20 to 25 mph, with gusts to over 30 mph, rare to have so many days in a row of this strong of wind from that direction. After enduring the season’s first major heat wave the previous week, we saw temperature cool off back to late winter type conditions, lows in the 60 and highs in the upper 70s. The main impact the south wind had for anglers, besides keeping most charters tied to the dock through Thursday, was how the water clarity became turned over, Pacific currents pushed cold and dirty water into the Sea of Cortez, reaching all the way to north of Los Frailes, this dropped ocean temperatures from the 78/80 degree range down to a chilly 67/68 degrees. This is a drastic change overnight, now the weather has settled down, but this will take some time for conditions to rebound to how they were, offshore from San Jose del Cabo there are now areas where water is 72/74 degrees, a few nice days of calmer weather and we should see water temperatures back into the mid-70s.

The rapid change in conditions put a halt to any consistent fishing action that had been happening prior to the south winds. There had been good marlin action offshore, also a mix of dorado, wahoo and yellowfin tuna to round out the surface action. Also we were seeing better quality off the bottom structure, namely for amberjack and a few dogtooth snapper, both of which prefer warm water conditions. So now with the colder water we heard of a few striped marlin being encountered outside of the Gordo Banks and towards Iman Bank. Most panga charters were concentrating efforts near San Luis Bank and off of Cardon and La Fortuna, where they found some of the Eastern Pacific bonito, yellow snapper, leopard grouper and triggerfish

The only thing good to say about the conditions this past week, is that the climate was comfortable as far as temperature was, a relief from the hot weather and most likely the last cold wave of the season we will feel, with the major heat of the summer season just waiting for us in the very near future.

Cold water seemed to even scatter the available baitfish, pangeros were now working overtime to find jurelito, caballito and some moonfish, of course there are still some ballyhoo and squid slabs also being offered.

For the few days that charter fleets were even able to operate this week, the most consistent action was found closer to shore, either slow trolling or drift fishing baits and also some action found on yo-yo style jigs. A lot of changes surely will happen in the coming weeks and conditions do warm back up to the normal patterns.

Just prior to the water turning over due to persistent south winds, we saw some decent roosterfish action accounted for off of inshore grounds, San Luis and the San Jose del Cabo Hotel zone both produced roosterfish in decent number, fish to 25 pounds were landed.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 42 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 9 striped marlin, 2 wahoo, 3 dogtooth snapper, 5 yellowfin tuna, 90 bonito, 4 dorado, 6 amberjack,11 leopard grouper (cabrilla), 2 pompano, 32 yellow snapper, 4 sierra, 8 barred pargo, 22 roosterfish and 75 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric

Anglers –
June 4, 2016

With the official start of the summer still a couple of weeks away, the weather conditions are steadily warming and becoming more humid. Scattered morning clouds, burning off quickly as the day progresses. Wind patterns have been mainly from the south, 10 to 20 mph, generally calm early in the day, with more breeze later in the afternoon. Swells increased some this past week and there were strong currents, so swimmers need to be aware and use extra caution. Ocean water temperatures was in the lower 70’s on the Pacific, off of San Jose del Cabo it averaged 78 degrees and towards Los Frailes it was in the 80 degree range.

The local bait situation remains the same, anglers are using strips of squid, ballyhoo, caballito, jurelito and moonfish. Though this should be the season where we are finding bolito and smaller skipjack on the offshore grounds, so far we have seen very little of this activity, same goes for the inshore mullet migration, we have yet to see any of these schooling baitfish either, this being one of the reasons that not much inshore fishing action has been encountered, normally this is time when the annual roosterfish run starts to really take off, so far this action has been very spotty, a handful of larger grade roosterfish were caught and released from the offshore structure areas, where tuna, pargo and amberjack were also being targeted. This has been a trend in recent years for the roosterfish, normally an inshore species, though with the lack of inshore baitfish these gamefish are roaming further offshore to find food.

The main concentration of striped marlin is now being found from 15 to 20 miles offshore, besides striped marlin, a few sailfish in the mix, plenty of pilot sharks as well, with many of these sharks even striking on higher speed trolling lures, not only bait, an occasional wahoo on these same grounds as well, including a 75 lb. wahoo taken mid-week. Some of the stripers recently have been larger sized, up to 150 lb., we usually do see some of the bigger stripers towards the end of the main season. Not many wahoo were reported this past week, though we are seeing at least a couple per day in the overall fish count, no particular spot has been best for this, either out on the marlin ground, or closer to shore..

Amberjack are in the area, though the bite has moved around from day to day, some of these jacks have been found close to the marina entrance, off of the San Jose Estuary and off of Palmilla Point, as well as on the San Luis Bank. Many of these ambers were weighing in the 20 to 40 lb. range. The amberjack were striking best on the live baits, either caballito or moonfish. A couple of dogtooth snapper were also reported, this is the time we should see more of these largest of the pargo species moving into local waters. Besides finding plenty of triggerfish, though now mostly smaller size, not as large as we were seeing earlier in the spring, we are seeing a mix of some barred pargo and yellow snapper, both being quality eating species and scrappy fighters.

Yellowfin tuna has been hit or miss, but in recent days we are seeing an improvement, smaller grade yellowfin striking on smaller trolled hoochies from Red Hill to Chileno Bay and north between Iman and Vinorama anglers found tuna up to 40 pounds on high sots while drift fishing strips of squid or slow trolling surf with caballito or moonfish. Once again the lack of sardina we are not having as easy of time enticing these yellowfin tuna into surface feeding frenzies.

Dorado were starting to be found in greater number, but anglers were still lucky to land a couple of these fish, with most of these being smaller in size, only a handful of fish up to 20 lb. accounted for.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 73 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 2 sailfish, 5 dogtooth snapper, 25 striped marlin, 18 wahoo, 105 yellowfin tuna, 22 bonito, 58 dorado, 32 amberjack, 13 leopard grouper (cabrilla), 55 yellow snapper, 15 sierra, 14 barred, 18 huachinango (red snapper), 10 roosterfish and 160 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric

Anglers –
May 28, 2016

We are still only seeing moderate crowds of tourists arriving, though we expect that when school semesters all finish there will be more families going on vacation. The weather definitely became more tropical this past week, we saw scattered cloud cover much of the morning, burning off as the days progressed, high temperatures in the upper 80s. There was some swirling gusting winds the first part of the week, the second half we saw calmer conditions, afternoon breezes picking up predominately from the south, though overall anglers emjoyed comfortably fishing conditions. Swells increased some and currents were also stronger than normal. Water temperatures ranged from 70 degrees around the corner on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas, to near 80 degrees on the Sea of Cortez side, this is where the majority of the sportfishing fleets were concentrated, From off of Chileno, to Red Hill, Cardon, La Fortuna, Iman, San Luis and Vinorama.
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Anglers found that baitfish were less plentiful this past week, not much inshore baitfish activity at all and the offshore grounds did have some small skipjack, but no reports of bolito, should start seeing more of this favored food source showing on the local fishing grounds soon. Limited supplies of caballito, moonfish, jurelito were available in the marina area and the bait vendors also were offering ballyhoo and slabs of squid.

Fishing action was slower for the first part of the week, partly because winds limited options, but later in the week we saw much improved action, particularly near the San Luis Bank, where hog sized amberjack in the 20 to 80 lb. class were accounted for, also some good wahoo action was encountered, as well as more dorado than we had previously seen. Anglers used various baits and lures, a combination of drift fishing, slow trolling and higher speed trolling all produced strikes. We saw wahoo to 50 pounds and dorado up to 25 lb. Yellowfin tuna were scattered, some hitting on squid and others while trolling smaller hoochies and Rapalas, most of the tuna landed were in the 5 to 20 lb. range. There were reports of charters landing as many as a dozen yellowfin trolling off of Red Hill, while north of Punta Gorda most boats were only finding a couple yellowfin in the their combined catch, but there was more chances at variety in that direction, particularly for finding the wahoo, dorado and amberjack.

Striped marlin were found within several miles of shore, as well as further out on their normal traditional grounds. Striking on baits as well as trolled lures, sizes ranged from 50 to 130 lb. There was an unusual story this week of a 20 ft. whale shark being seen swimming around inside the Cabo San Lucas Marina, apparently this was event never witnessed before, normally this very elusive species is encountered occasionally in the clear waters on offshore sea mounts.

Not much roosterfish action reported, though there were at least some being hooked into by hard core surf anglers, lack of inshore baitfish activity to attract more of these prized fighters. Next month is usually the prime season for these sought after gamefish.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 78 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 5 sailfish, 1 yellowtail, 28 striped marlin, 33 wahoo, 86 yellowfin tuna, 25 bonito, 26 dorado, 29 amberjack, 6 cabrilla, 15 yellow snapper, 14 sierra, 8 barred pargo, 5 parrot fish, 3 pompano and 200 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric