December 11, 2011

Late fall has brought cooler temperatures and more unpredictable winds sweeping through Southern Baja, back to back cold fronts from the north, no rain, just scattered cloud cover, at this time conditions have settled and anglers are enjoying much more comfortable conditions. Currents are now on a cooling trend, average water temperature has been 75 to 79 throughout most of the region, still a bit warmer than usually for this same time frame. Clean blue water is being found within one mile of shore.

Schooling mackerel are now on the local fishing grounds, mixed with sardinetas. Smaller sardinas are also being found in limited quantities by the commercial fleet. The number of visiting anglers dropped way off compared to previous weeks, as people now prepare for the holiday season. Inside the jetty channel of the Puerto Los Cabos Marina there has been plentiful supplies of caballito, wonder how long this resource can hold up with so many throw nets being used in this small area?

Local charters have been concentrating their efforts from Santa Maria, Gordo Banks, La Fortuna to Iman Bank. Most common species this past week has been dorado, found while trolling lures and by slow trolling or drift fishing various baits. Numbers were up from past week, still varied from day to day as to the best locations, if anglers did find any type of floating debris they were pretty much guaranteed of having wide open action. Charter had varied success of one or two dorado, up to a dozen or more. Sizes ranged from small juvenile fish to 30 pound bulls. These same fishing grounds produced a few wahoo, many smaller sized ‘hoo in the area, not often to we see wahoo of ten pounds, they normally are more in the 30 to 40 pounds range. The handful of wahoo that are being accounted for have hit on yo-yo’s, trolled baits and high speed lures, such as Rapala X Rap’s. With the water temperatures still favorably warm, we are optimistic that wahoo will become more active, as there is lots of baitfish in the area and there is now lighter angling pressure.

Yellowfin tuna action was slow during the recent cold fronts, but tuna are still in the area and with the weather now calmed down for a couple of days we are anticipating hearing more reports of yellowfin catches. On Thursday, several pangas charters hooked into tuna on the Gordo Banks and at least three quality tuna in the one hundred pound class were landed.

Not much bottom action being done recently, but as conditions stabilized some anglers did report action on cabrilla, yellowtail and pargo. There are still a few home guard yellowtail biting on the Gordo Banks, lots of hammerhead sharks competing for baits though, at time making it impossible to keep a bait in the zone where the yellows were found.

Striped marlin are arriving in larger numbers, following their favored food source, with all of the mackerel now in the area we do expect to see another great year for marlin. Still a few sailfish and larger marlin around, one black marlin was lost from a La Playita panga on Wednesday.

Roosterfish have been found in surprisingly good numbers for this time of year, The beach stretches in front of the hotel zone off of San Jose del Cabo produced action for roosterfish up to 20 pounds, trolling live caballito was the best bet to find the better grade of roosters. Sierra were now arriving in increased numbers, as they prefer the cooling water temperatures, typically these fish school in this area through May, they average two or three pounds, but can do grow to 15 pounds and are very aggressive fighters on light tackle.

More and more whale sightings now, as humpback and gray whales are now arriving to their breeding grounds after spending the summer feeding in Alaskan waters.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 70 charters for the week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:

15 striped marlín, 3 sailfish, 264 dorado, 15 wahoo, 12 yellowfin tuna, 18 pargo, 10 cabrilla, 16 bonito, 9 yellowtail, 106 roosterfish and 36 sierra.

Good Fishing, Eric