August 10, 2013
Anglers –
As the summer climate has progressively heated up, so has the offshore fishing action, as anglers are finding a mix of billfish, dorado, yellowfin tuna and even a few wahoo. Weather patterns have settled down, there was a tropical squall that moved in from the east last Sunday, bring some scattered rain showers and some eye opening lightening. There has been very little wind recently, some scattered clouds, very warm and humid. There are a series of tropical storm system now tracking on distant westerly paths, the coming weeks is when historically these storms can form in much closer proximity and threaten land, so we will be monitoring forecasts carefully.
Bait supplies for caballito, mullet and moonfish remained sufficient, though they are not as numerous as earlier in the summer. More bolito are now schooling on the fishing grounds and are being using for offshore trolling baits. The bolito are readily striking on small hoochies early in the day, but as the sun rose higher in the sky these great baitfish became hard to catch. There has been a long absence of schooling sardinas for the La Playita panga fleets, this past week the sardinas have been starting to move in along the beach stretch just to the north of the Puerto Los Cabos Marina Jetty, not in sufficient quantity to supply the fleets, but at least this is encouraging we are seeing these baitfish back in our area. Some locals have been able to net these sardinas from the beach and are using them to catch some very impressive sized snook, quite a few of these normally elusive fish have been landed, weighing in the 20 to 45 lb. class. One snook estimated to be at least 60 pounds was landed, this could have been a new IGFA world record, as the all tackle record for snook is now listed at 58 lb., those these local anglers just hauled the catch off to their home, not wishing to go through all of the record applications, etc…
Anglers are finding good numbers of late season roosterfish early in the day right in the vicinity of the PLC Marina Channel, still some roosters to 50 pounds in this area, striking on slow trolled live bait. Not much action found off the bottom rock piles now, there has been a persistent strong current running and this appears to be slacking up some now, in recent days some nice huachinango were being hooked into on yo-yo jigs on rock pile near San Luis Bank.
Most consistent gamefish action is now being found offshore, anywhere from 3 to 15 miles out, has varied from day to day, earlier in the week the best bite was found off of San Luis, then later in the week that action slowed and the bite was better straight out front of San Jose del Cabo and towards the Gordo Banks. Striped marlin, blue marlin, sailfish, dorado, yellowfin tuna and a handful of wahoo were all being found. Anglers used a combination of trolling lures and various baitfish, including slabs from giant squid, which were being sold at the dock area in the morning.
Most of the yellowfin being encountered were on the grounds from Iman to Vinormama, not associated with porpoise, blind strikes while trolling hoochies, cedar plugs and small feathers, sizes averaged 8 to 15 lb. Dorado ranged from small juvenile fish to trophy sized bulls, close to 50 pounds. Scattered action, some charters reported never seeing any dorado, while others accounted for 3,4,5 of more very impressive fish. Billfish were also hit or miss, though some incredible action was encountered, one cruiser charter out of La Playita accounted for two blue marlin, a striped marlin and sailfish, as well as tuna and dorado all in one morning.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 85 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 5 blue marlin, 9 sailfish, 28 striped marlin, 96 yellowfin tuna, 110 dorado, 3 wahoo, 38 roosterfish, 15 jack crevalle, , 22 huachinango (red snapper) and 13 cabrilla.
Good fishing, Eric