Anglers –
September 29, 2018
We saw light crowds of anglers arriving this week, though ocean conditions remained decent through the weekend. Active tropical conditions now being closely monitored, with category four Hurricane Rosa spinning over the Pacific several hundred miles off to the west, following a northern track, expected to impact northern areas of Baja before dissipated over Mainland Mexico and into the U.S. There were some isolated showers felt locally, particularly on Thursday night when Cabo San Lucas experienced heavy flooding in the lower lying areas. Swells increased to three meters, but winds were light and anglers were able to reach the normal fishing grounds. Presently we are watching a newly forming tropical system off of Southern Mexico, expected to become Hurricane Sergio, but also is forecast to follow a similar path as Rosa and remain safely away from any impact with Southern Baja, so hopefully these forecasts remain actuate.
There continued to be supplies of sardinas near the PLC marina entrance, this was the main bait now being used. Heavy pressure coming with the fall season, hard to say how the baitfish supply will hold up, there should be some control on how much brined dead bait is allowed during the upcoming high dollar tournaments, this always puts a major hurt on local bait supplies.
With clean blue water now within a mile of shore and ocean temperatures averaging close to 85 degrees, fleets have not had to go far offshore to find fish. Most consistent action recently has been found between the Iman and San Luis Banks. Main species has been the yellowfin tuna, with the full moon passing these fish became a little more finicky than they already had been, but still there were quality yellowfin being landed every day, average size fish were in the 50 to 70 lb. range. Some days they would bite early, other times it was a late bite, hot spots would vary each day, early in the week San Luis was best, then Iman, then to the inside off of La Fortuna. With persistence anglers were able to land one or two, up to four or five of these tuna per day.
Over last weekend the wahoo started to bite, first on the Iman Bank, trolling Rapalas and other lures, not necessarily only early in the day either. For the few boats that got into this action, they reported having multiple strikes and landing as many as four wahoo, weights were to over 40 lb. This action slowed way down on the Iman Bank, but there were new reports from further north off of Vinorama where wahoo action was very good as well, this is longer range, but hopefully these fish will move on to our normal closer fishing grounds.
Not much going on with dorado, just a handful of mostly smaller single fish being encountered. There were opportunities for billfish, this week there were striped marlin, blue marlin, black marlin and sailfish all found, no big numbers, but these fish are in the area and some impressive blues and black to over 400 lb. were reported. Slow trolling larger baitfish like white skipjack or football sized tuna showing the best results on the local high spots for hooking into a big marlin.
Not much bottom action, a few snapper, cabrilla, amberjack, not many people concentrated on this. We did see one dogtooth of close to 60 lb. Also a 50 lb. amberjack, so there are some impressive fish in the area.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 53 charters for the week. Anglers reported a fish count of: 3 striped marlin, 4 sailfish, 2 blue marlin, 2 black marlin, 9 dorado, 17 wahoo, 92 yellowfin tuna, 22 bonito, 12 red snapper, 4 dogtooth snapper, 1 mullet snapper, 1 roosterfish, 4 amberjack, 18 barred pargo, 1 sculpin, 2 surgeon fish, 8 cabrilla and 70 triggerfish.
Good fishing, Eric