February 15, 2020
We are seeing light crowds of anglers now, many have been following weather and fishing reports patiently waiting for things to warm up and improve the all-around action. For the past month or so we have seen persistent winds, predominately blowing out of the north, dropping ocean water temperatures in to the 68 to 70 degree range. Greenish currents have been swirling throughout the region, especially closer to shore. This week we had a season low temperature of 47 degree midweek, daytime highs have been reaching 75 degrees, scattering cloud cover most days.
Bait vendors are offering a mix of caballito, ballyhoo and slabs of squid. The schools of baitfish offshore of San Jose del Cabo have dispersed and fishing action is more spread out now. Still no signs of sardinas, there were reports of these schooling baitfish seen further north, but with the winds it just has not worked out trying to search for this resource.
Most local charters are fishing areas from off of Red Hill and north to Iman Bank, also all along the inshore beach stretches. The first half of the week was particularly slow, anglers fortunate to find a couple of mostly smaller sized fish. Then later in the week the water clarity improved north of Punta Gorda and on the Iman Bank some yellowfin tuna were finally hooked into, these fish ranged from football sized up to 50 lb. Striking on strips of squid, later over the weekend these tuna were preferring to strike on slow trolled live caballito, of course choppy conditions did not make things easy. For the most part anglers did well to land one, two or three of these yellowfin. If weather does settle this coming week as forecasts are saying, we could get into some quality action.
Dorado were still in the area, scattered fish in smaller schools, more of these found closer to shore, than far offshore, sizes up to 15 lb. Water temperatures now on the cool side for these migrating gamefish. Some anglers were in the right spot and caught a few nice dorado just like that, other anglers never even had any opportunities.
Bottom action was limited with the north winds, a mix of various snapper, pargo, bonito, triggerfish and cabrilla, most of these were smaller sized, but all good eating. Inshore was slow as well, a handful of sierra, a few specimens close to ten pounds, also some scattered roosterfish action on fish to 15 lb.
The combined sportfishing fleet launching out of the panga area from Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out an estimated 49 charters for the week and anglers reported an approximate fish count of: 1 striped marlin, 41 dorado, 22 yellowfin tuna, 9 sierra, 13 roosterfish, 9 cabrilla, 5 bonito, 16 red snapper, 8 spotted rose snapper, 12 yellow snapper, 7 porgy, 1 island jack, 1 amberjack and 22 triggerfish.
Good Fishing, Eric