Anglers –
October 10, 2015
With crowds of anglers now arriving for the most popular Fall Season sportfishing fleets are now very busy. At this time we have no new tropical storms threatening from the south, only one low pressure area that is already located far off to the west, half way to Hawaii. Local weather conditions remain warm and humid, there has been quite a lot of cloud cover, threatening rain at times, last weekend we did receive significant rainfall, but we did not have any rain through the week, until this next weekend. Presently we are having wider spread thundershowers throughout the whole area, accompanied by lightning and thunder, mostly lighter rainfall, though in Cabo San Lucas they reported heavier rain than in San Jose del Cabo. Sportfishing fleets continued to operate with caution. Tropical weather patterns are persisting late into the season. So we are hoping that the weather settles, days are now starting to cool down, as we get further into October we regularly enjoy ideal weather. With ocean water temperatures still ranging in the mid to upper 80’s, all around conditions can be that much more unpredictable.
Since the passing of stormy squalls last weekend we have seen very pleasant conditions throughout this week, moderate ocean swells, no strong winds, all around good environment for ocean fishing. Action was more spread out in recent days, obtaining sardinas became harder, no guarantee, anglers using squid strip were not doing as well as previous weeks. Hard to say what the reason is for a slower week, yellowfin tuna were being seen surfacing at times in sizable schools, but were finicky, one of the main reasons being that there were no quantities of sardinas to freely chum with. The majority of the yellowfin now being found on local grounds were ranging in the 5 to 25 lb. class or in the range of 50 to 60 lb., we did hear of unconfirmed reports of a larger grade of yellowfin hanging around the Pacific San Jaime or Golden Gate Banks.
The later part of this past week did show improvement for the yellowfin tuna action, later morning bite off of Punta Gorda, sardinas were the best, fish were also hooked on strips of squid, These tuna were in the 10 to 25 lb. class, boats were accounting for anywhere from a couple of fish, to as many as ten. With more sardinas this would be a hot bite. We hope that more sardinas move into our range.
A group of local commercial pangeros were finding the 50 to 60 lb. tuna biting on strips of squid underneath moving porpoise pods on the grounds near La Laguna to Cardon, though this has been a late afternoon bite, during normal morning, mid-day hours there has not been this porpoise activity. Only sporadic catches, some charters finding three, four, five fish and others not being able to find any at all. Most consistent grounds were from the Iman to Vinorama Banks.
The action off of the Santa Maria area slowed way down, better chances were not north of Punta Gorda, still no guarantees though. Only a few scattered dorado being found and most all of these have been under 15 pounds. Wahoo were even scarcer, though they are in the area and we expect any slight cooling trend in water temperature could trigger them into being more aggressive. Other action was for miscellaneous structure species, most common being triggerfish or snapper, an occasional dogtooth or amberjack, even one yellowtail.
Crazy year, with all of the dorado and wahoo, as well as striped marlin being in the direction of Southern California. Eventually these gamefish will migrate back in our direction. Local conditions are great though and anything could happen on any given day. We do hope that we find a better source of sardinas, recently these schooling baitfish have moved into the protected zone of Cabo Pulmo National Park and bait netters were allowed to target them from these waters
Main action locally for billfish was for sailfish, no huge numbers, but most days these fish were being hooked into on the same inshore tuna grounds. We did see a private boat land a 300 lb. class blue marlin. Other anglers trolled large baits on the Gordo Banks and reported not finding any action for the larger marlin or cow sized yellowfin tuna, lots of natural bait in this area, so you never know, but there are likely be some large predators nearby on these same grounds.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 128 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 13 sailfish, 2 blue marlin, 260 yellowfin tuna, 28 dorado, 7 wahoo, 1 yellowtail, 44 white skipjack, 24 bonito, 7 dogtooth snapper, 22 yellow snapper, 7 amberjack, 75 triggerfish, 16 cabrilla and 19 barred pargo.
Good fishing, Eric