GORDO BANKS PANGAS
December 24th, 2023
Many vacationing families are starting to arrive in Los Cabos for Christmas and New Years, though only moderate number of anglers are showing. Ideal wintertime climate with not much wind and some cloudy days. With ocean water temperatures now ranging 76 to 79 degrees, we are still seeing some excellent action for some of the most popular pelagic gamefish species.
The main target species continues to be dorado, while there is a good chance of catching yellowfin tuna and wahoo. Some fortunate anglers are catching a gram slam of all three during one outing.
Most of our charters this week focused on the inner Gordo and Punta Gorda. Many of the boats started out their day at Punta Gorda trolling Rapalas and Ballyhoo in an effort to catch a wahoo. While many boats came in empty handed, a few wahoo were caught with this technique. The wahoo bite did slow down this week as we only saw a couple on some days. Usually after a few hours of trying for wahoo, the boats were moving towards the inner Gordo for dorado and tuna.
This week, we saw a good number of nice yellowfin tuna caught at the Gordo, with most fish ranging from 70 to 110 pounds. Most of these fish were caught on strips of squid or dead sardinas if available. On the same grounds, big dorado continue to be seen, with many of them in the 30–40-pound club. The biggest dorado this week was closer to 50 pounds, caught on a strip of squid while looking for tuna. On some days, these large schools of dorado are not allowing us to efficiently fish for tuna as they are feeding off the squid chum line. The tuna bite seemed to be better for the local pangeros later in the day.
Later this week, some boats encountered a tuna bite at Punta Gorda. These fish are mostly 30-40 pounds. The last 3 days, these tuna have been biting for a short period, usually around 30-40 minutes. The best action came closer to midday. These Punta Gorda tuna have also been hooked on squid and sardinas.
The dorado bite continues to be very productive on most grounds, with most of our boats catching their limit for each day. Our boats stayed mostly at Punta Gorda and inner Gordo this week, though we did hear of many boats also finding big schools of dorado at Iman, La Fortuna, and Cardon. Many of these boats also saw some feeding tunas at Iman while chumming for dorado with live sardinas.
We are starting to see a greater number of striped marlin caught. There is not much inshore or bottom action going on at this time. However, we did see a few Mexican bonitos and snappers caught while jigging on different structures. More and more whales are now arriving, providing extra entertainment for anglers and their families.
Next week should be a slower week in terms of anglers. Our captains will definitely enjoy a few days of spending quality time with their families. We hope that you have a great Christmas with your loved ones.
Good Fishing, Brian
