June 20, 2021

Happy Fathers’ Day

Again this week we are seeing increasing crowds of tourists arriving for the first wave of summer vacations. We are now officially starting the summer season, the climate has been steadily warming, as is normal for this time of year, but overall conditions have still been bearable, with some afternoon Pacific breezes prevailing. With distance Tropical Storm Dolores developing below Manzanillo on the mainland we felt a bit more humidity, more cloud cover and larger ocean swells, but nothing more, as anglers for the most part were finding favorable ocean conditions, particularly in the direction north of Punta Gorda. South winds picked up late weekend, which also contributed to pushing in cooler greenish currents in the same direction. Ocean temperature has ranged in the 74 to 80 degree range.

Bait netters are finding sardinas, caballito and mullet all near the marina area now, they are also offering slabs of squid and ballyhoo, so bait has remained plentiful. The majority of local sportfishing charters are fishing on the grounds from Cardon, La Fortuna, Iman, San Luis and north to Vinorama, with offshore billfish action continuing to be found near the 1150 or 95 spots. Striped marlin were spread out, also being found within a few miles of shore, depending on currents on a particular day, also a couple of sailfish accounted for, as well a small sized blue marlin and mid-week there was a swordfish brought in by a trip of commercial pangeros, smaller sized, about 130 lb., but impressive anyway.

Yellowfin tuna action was hit or miss, continually fluctuating water conditions making the action sporadic. Best chances in recent days has been north near Vinorama, close to shore, 100 to 200 ft. of water, early bite on sardinas or striped squid, a smaller grade of fish 12 to 25 lb., though earlier in the week other schools of tuna encountered had yellowfin to 30 to 70 lb.

Dorado were even less numerous than were the tuna, some days we are seeing a few dorado up to 20 lb. in the mix, but other days we are not seeing them, once conditions do stabilize more, we surely will seeing more schooling dorado show on local grounds. Not much at all going on with wahoo either, early in the week there were reports of wahoo seen free swimming and a couple of hook ups, but as the week progressed nothing more.

Most consistent fishery now continues to be concentrating on the bottom rocky structure, from as shallow as 50 ft., to depths of 200 ft. A wide variety of species are being landed, while anglers are using yo-yo style jigs and bait, mainly sardinas. A few impressive amberjack to over 50 lb., leopard grouper to 20 lb., yellow snapper, red snapper, rose snapper, pompano, bonito, barred pargo, triggerfish, island jack and even had a batch of blackfin jack, which are not a very common local catch. All of these fish are excellent eating, including the local Mexican Bonito, which is unlike its California relative.

Along the shoreline there are more hog sized jack crevalle than there are roosterfish, as roosters are running a bit later than usual this season. We are still seeing some quality sized sierra along the shore, though not as many now as water is warming, the sierra eventually move out. Shore anglers have had some impressive catches recently, including snook to over 40 lb. and tripletail, those these anglers are dedicated and put in their time, but they know that this is now peak season for the better shore action.

Good Fishing, Eric

June 13, 2021

There seemed to be an increase of vacationers arriving in Los Cabos this past week, with school semesters now ending for summer, this gives families a chance to travel. Weather has remained comfortable, not unbearably hot yet, clear sunny days with highs in the upper 80s, a bit tropical, as there are now two tropical systems developing, one of them TS Carlos, these are far south and off to the west and are not forecast to impact Southern Baja at all. Perhaps we will see some increased ocean swells later next week and increased humidity. Local ocean temperature is in the 78 to 80 degree range, winds have been at times from the north and then from the south, but have not been too much an issue for anglers, mostly picking up later in the day, as ocean conditions have been favorable throughout the week.

Marina bait vendors have fond good supplies of healthy sized sardinas, as well as some caballito and mullet, with other options of slabs of squid and ballyhoo. Off shore fishing has been centered near the 95 and 1150 spots, mainly for striped marlin, but also a few dorado and yellowfin tuna being found as well. The majority of the inshore and bottom action has been in the direction of the La Fortuna, Cardon, Iman, San Luis and Vinorama. On the San Luis grounds there were tuna being hooked into every day, though the fish were finicky, some days better than others, anglers were fortunate to land one or two, some had four or five, also more sea lions and sharks making a presence. Most of the yellowfin we saw ranged in the 20 to 60 lb. size, though there was one 234 lb. tuna landed Friday from these same grounds. The best bet was to drift fish with sardinas, squid or slow trolled caballito or bolito, if you happen to jig one of those candy baits up.

We are still seeing very few dorado, last week we saw more, though this week there were wahoo starting to show up in the fish counts, most of these were hooked into while drifting for tuna, on sardinas, lucky with no leaders, others also hit on rapala type trolling lures. Sizes up to 30 lb., at least we are seeing a few of the ‘hoo, it has been a while.

With surface action still a bit spotty many charters are concentrating their efforts closer to shore over the rocky high spots or trolling right along the beach stretches. Roosterfish action has been slow to get going, considering this is now peak season and will be for the next month. Everything has been a different, slow to get going this season. We did see some roosters this week, one that was close to 50 lb. There were more jack crevalle than anything else close to shore, though there was still quite a few sierra hanging out in the warmer waters.

Off the bottom, in depths ranging from 60 to 200 feet, we saw a wide variety of species, even had one 20 lb. California sheepshead, as well as yellowtail, amberjack, fortune jack, bonito, black skipjack, pompano, island jack, surgeonfish, yellow snapper, red snapper, spotted rose snapper, barred pargo, leopard grouper, broomtail and pinto cabrilla and of course triggerfish, a couple of which were monsters. Most charters were coming in with an average of a dozen fish. Many of the smaller cabrilla and snapper are being released, which is a good thing, that we do strongly recommend.

Good Fishing, Eric

June 6, 2021

First week of June we are seeing moderate crowds of tourists arriving to the Los Cabos region. You could not ask for better weather conditions now, clear sunny skies, high temperature hovering about 85 degrees, little wind and wearing t-shirts early in the morning are no problem. Ocean temperature is in the 76 to 80 degree range in the direction of San Jose del Cabo and further north, though it is cooler on the Pacific, also windier. The majority of the sportfishing action is now taking place in the direction of the warmer currents.

Anglers were able to obtain good supplies of sardinas, caballito and now mullet are in the mix as well. Other options included the slabs of squid and ballyhoo. We still are in the transition period, from winds diminishing, cleaner blue and warming currents pushing in. This brings in schools of various baitfish and which in turn attract the pelagic gamefish. This whole season, through the winter and spring, it seems that weather cycles, as well as ocean currents, winds, etc… were all following unusual patterns. We are finally seeing more stabilization, though normally it is not until later in the month of July when things really start to heat up.

The billfish bite for striped marlin has still been concentrated offshore between the 95 and 1150 spots, though this week there were days when the marlin proved very finicky, seen in scores just lazily tailing on the surface, commonly in groups of four, five or six, but you had to work at getting them to bite. Fish were taken on trolled lures, but more often on cast or dropped back baits. We saw clean blue shifting again closer to shore, more of the striped marlin were also seen and hooked into on the grounds from Iman and San Luis, as well as near the Gordo Banks. We did see marlin ranging from 80 to 120 lb.

We saw a few more dorado moving into local grounds, no large numbers at all, but of the fish we did see, there were several very nice sized bulls up close to 40 lb accounted for. These dorado were being found offshore on the marlin grounds, but in recent days more are being seen on inshore areas north of Gordo. Still no wahoo to speak of, a few strikes and free swimming fish spotted, but no bite at this time.

Yellowfin tuna are also playing hard to get, spotty action found 20 to 40 miles offshore associated with moving porpoise. Tuna were also hanging around the Iman Banks, though only a few were hooked into, we weighed yellowfin up to 86 lb. this week, others of 20 to 70 lb. were accounted for, but again very few fish overall. Though over the weekend the tuna were seen coming up breezing the surface, but sere finicky and then disappeared.

The more consistent action has been coming off the various rocky high spots, from 60 to 200 feet of water, using yo-yo jigs and both live and dead baits. There was a wide variety of species being encountered, most common were the yellow snapper, red snapper, bonito, leopard grouper, amberjack and triggerfish. Some of the more exotic we saw this week were African pompano, snook, bluefin trevally and yellowtail. Along the shoreline there were still some sierra and some of these very large specimens, over 10 lb. Also big numbers of hog sized jack crevalle roaming close to shore, as well as a bit further than normal offshore, feeding on concentrations of baitfish. Some roosterfish reported towards the south, we expect a big run of the larger sized roosters in the coming weeks.

Good Fishing, Eric