December 11, 2010
Los Cabos is greeting visitors with warm sunny skies, this while much of the United States is enduring freezing early winter temperatures. Daytime highs in Cabo were near 80 degrees, with lows in the upper 50s. Breezes were moderate and blew prominently from the north, this kept ocean conditions comfortable for anglers out of San Jose del Cabo. Water temperature were slowly dropping, now averaging a still favorable 74 to 76 degrees through much of the Southern Baja Region.
There was a sharp decline in the numbers of tourists arriving in recent days, this can be expected, as people have other priorities and are now gearing up for Christmas. More whales are migrate in to local coastal waters, as these mammals arrive to enjoy the sub tropic conditions for the next several months. For the anglers that were here to fish, they found the fishing action to be a bit more spotty and scattered, but with persistence and patience there was a variety of quality game fish found on the local fishing grounds. The majority of the action was found from Chileno to Gordo Banks and north to Iman Bank.
The bait situation was limited, on most days there were caballito and sardinas available. Schools of sardinas were found close to shore off of Palmilla and towards Vinorama, though they varied in size and quantity. Obtaining the sardinas was necessary for targeting the yellowfin tuna that were schooling close to shore off of Chileno and Punta Gorda, these fish ranged up to 30 pounds and fly lining with sardinas was most successful. There was a larger grade of yellowfin holding on the Gordo Banks, most of these tuna ranged in the 30 to 60 pound class, tuna to over100 pounds were landed in recent days, and larger fish were seen at times breaking the surface. The fish seemed a bit finicky due to all of the natural food fish now on these fishing grounds. Using lighter fluorocarbon leaders, with combinations of live and dead baits did result in hook ups. You had to put in a good effort, but many charters did have two or more fish in their box.
Dorado became more scarce again this past week, only an occasional do-do encountered, more of them were found within a couple of miles to shore and weighed less than 20 pounds.. Wahoo action slowed as well, not many were hooked on trolled lures, but slow trolling with various baits did result in some scattered action, some wahoo were also striking on chrome patterned yo-yo style jigs, this while anglers were targeting yellowfin tuna and chumming with their limited supply of bait. Recently it has paid off to purchase extra bait.
Bottom fishing produced a mix of cabrilla, rainbow runners, pargo and amberjack, though no big numbers, strong currents were running on and off, hard to always find favorable conditions to drift over the rock piles. A handful of yellowtail were landed by the La Playita fleet, so we should see more of these jacks arriving with the cooler waters.
Anglers have been starting to troll coastal stretches and are finding some smaller sized roosterfish, jack crevalle and sierra, most of these fish were hooked on sardinas and weighed ten pounds or less, can be fun action for children. Sierra were schooling off of the San Jose hotel zone and have been striking well on hoochies or rapalas early in the morning.
The combined local La Playita panga fleets sent out approximately 65 charters, with anglers reports a fish count of: 4 striped marlin, 1 black marlin, 19 wahoo, 136 yellowfin tuna, 35 dorado, 9 amberjack, 4 dogtooth snapper, 11 cabrilla, 2 yellowtail, 18 rainbow runner, 28 roosterfish and 38 sierra.
Good Fishing, Eric