GORDO BANKS PANGAS
November 16th, 2025

The week started off great with a hot wahoo bite at Iman. On Monday, many of our boats came in with 4-6 wahoo, while still losing many more. Quality size wahoo averaging 25-35 pounds. On this day, wahoo were hitting almost anything, Rapalas, ballyhoo, jigs, and chiwlis (live and dead). The bigger wahoo came on the live chiwilis. However, Tuesday was much different, we had many boats try for wahoo in the same area and we were able to only account for a handful between 15 boats or so. The rest of the week remained very slow for wahoo a complete switch.

Throughout the week, we still had a few of them at the fillet table every day, though they were a challenge. Most of the boats that focused on wahoo reported losing most of the strikes on live bait (chiwilis). Chiwilis were tough to catch for most part of the week. Captains reported seeing the chiwili deeper and for some reason wouldn’t come up as much, only at specific times of the day. We kept hearing from reports that 8:30 to 9:30 was a better time to target chiwilis. The current made it challenging at Iman to try for chiwili. Most of the chiwili were caught at the Gordo. Some boats trolled their chiwilis at Punta Gorda, closer to shore, and were able to get some wahoo and dorado later in the morning.

The highlight of this week was a hot yellowfin tuna bite at the Gordo. We saw good numbers at both the Outer and Inner Gordo, though we saw nicer size tuna at the Inner towards the end of the week.

On Thursday, we finally started to see some live sardines. The bait guys are netting good size sardines towards Hilton Hotel/Cerro Colorado area. We saw a good supply Thursday through this Sunday. We are hoping sardines are available throughout the rest of the month as we have noticed a big difference getting these tuna to come up to feed on the surface. On Thursday, most of the tuna caught were small footballs. We started to see more quality fish on Friday, tuna in the 30–40-pound range. This weekend, most of the tuna caught were nice size averaging 40 to 80 pounds. In the same area, some boats landed a few dorado as they came up to chase the live sardines. 

Some boats tried specifically for bigger tuna trolling live chiwilis or small skipjacks. We had 3 big tuna this week, all on live chiwilis. The biggest ones this week were 211, 188, and 150 pounds. 

Good Fishing, Brian