GORDO BANKS PANGAS

October 18, 2020

We continue to see larger crowds of anglers arriving, as this is always one of the busiest times for sportfishing fleets in the Los Cabos area. Also this is big tournament time, with the Los Cabos Billfish and Bisbee Offshore just finishing and this next week there will be the largest and richest of all, the Bisbee’s Black and Blue event, followed early next month by the WON Tuna Jackpot. Overall this season will be remembered as the year of unpresented numbers of changes and cancellations, all this due to the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic.

Weather patterns were again increasingly tropical, as mornings had started to be a little chilly, not anymore, as lows were back in the upper 70’s and highs about 90 degrees, but combined with humidity factor the heat index was more like 99 degrees. This change all happened at the start of this past week, as a tropical low pressure system developed off to the west of the Southern Peninsula. On Tuesday morning we received about one inch of rain, more than what was originally forecast, though we did still have charters fishing that day, as weather front passed through by mid-morning. The rest of the week has been clear with slight swells and little wind. Ocean water temperature actually warmed back up, as it had been on a cooling trend, but now it was back into the 87 degree range.

Local fleets were mostly fishing the grounds from the Gordo Banks and north towards Vinorama, main bait source has been sardinas, with slabs of squid also being used. Despite ideal ocean conditions most days, the all-around action was more hit or miss. Perhaps the sudden warmer water put the fish off the bite, hard to say, also added pressure. Main catch we saw was for dorado, with the majority of these fish taken while trolling and they were weighing in the 5 to 15 lb. range. Very few wahoo landed, but we did see a handful of them brought in, most of these hit on trolled Rapalas and were in the 20 to 40 lb. class. As water temperature drops back near 80 degrees we expect to see much better activity on these sought after gamefish.

We did see a few nice yellowfin tuna brought to the scales, topping 130 lb. and a couple of cows over 200 lb. were taken during recent tournaments. Most of the tuna we are seeing are more in the 50 to 70 lb. class, though even these became more elusive in recent days. Most of the tuna were taken on sardinas, though larger baits were also used for chance at the cows. The Gordo Banks produced a few of the larger tuna, though more charters are trying their luck on the Iman, San Luis and Vinorama grounds where action had been more consistent.

Off the bottom a handful of nice dogtooth snapper, cabrilla and amberjack were accounted for, though no consistent action to speak of and numbers were limited. Billfish action was spread out, we saw more sailfish than anything else, but a few much larger blue and black marlin were in the area, as we saw a few of them weighed in during recent tournaments, the largest being the 593 lb. black marlin taken by legendary La Playita pangero Hugo Pino, who also caught the winning yellowfin tuna of 236 lb. during the same event.

Good fishing, Eric