GORDO BANKS PANGAS
April 14th, 2024

Things have been quiet around our marina area this week. Even though we still had a good number of charters go out, we can tell slow season is starting to settle in. The weather is starting to feel a lot warmer, and we expect to have temperatures in the mid-80s next week.

This week was surprising as we saw a good amount of yellowfin caught. Monday was the most productive day of the week as we experienced the solar eclipse out on the water. One of our boats came in early with 10 nice sized yellowfin that day, the biggest one weighing 75 pounds. This unexpected bite was at San Luis Bank with live and dead sardines. Tuesday and Wednesday were also good days to catch tuna, though they were a bit windy. The bite slowed down again throughout this weekend; however, we are still seeing a handful at the fillet station. We continue to see tuna over 80 pounds on a daily basis. The biggest one seen this week was 145 pounds caught on a dead sardine. A few captains reported hooking some bigger tuna on live skipjacks, though they were not able to land them after long battles. Most of the bigger tuna caught this week came from San Luis. A handful of smaller ones came from Iman Bank.

We continue to see wahoo while drifting sardines for tuna. A few boats have been lucky to catch them on sardines and circle hooks. Most of these wahoo are averaging 15-20 pounds. Many of our captains believe that the wahoo bite could be good earlier in the morning with Rapalas and rigged ballyhoo. We have not been targeting wahoo as we are focusing most of our time on the yellowfin bite. We also saw more dorado towards the end of the week. A few boats reported finding some floating buoys while looking for marlin 10-15 miles out. These boats did great as they were able to catch double digits with a few 30+ pounders in the mix.

Towards the end of the week, the fleet reported good striped marlin action at Iman while drifting sardines for tuna. Throughout the rock piles in Iman, La Fortuna, and Cardon, we continue to catch a good mix of grouper, snappers, and amberjack. Surprisingly, we also had one yellowtail close to 20 pounds. Inshore action remains consistent with Sierra (Spanish mackerel) and a few nicer Roosters. We did see a few bigger Roosters this week, most of them averaging around 15-25 pounds.

Good Fishing, Brian