GORDO BANKS PANGAS
March 10th, 2024
We continue to see big crowds of spring breakers arriving in the Los Cabos area. The weather is slowly starting to take a turn as we are experiencing warmer mornings and earlier sunrises. This week, we experienced some high winds primarily from the North/North-west. These winds started earlier in the mornings, making it difficult for the fleet to make a run towards Iman and San Luis Banks.
The yellowfin tuna bite took a drastic turn of events throughout mid-week. We still had a good run throughout Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday through Friday were slow days as we did not see good numbers as compared to last week. To not get so beat up by the wind, most boats tried to get to Iman and La Fortuna earlier in the morning and then focused closer to shore and Punta Gorda for a chance at a few dorado, Sierra, and bottom species. Most boats were able to save the day with a couple nice dorado, grouper, and snapper for dinner.
We did have some tuna earlier in the week with live sardines. While cleaning up some of these tuna, the fillet crew noticed that their stomachs were full of red crabs. Many captains mentioned that the tuna would come up on the sardines but just wouldn’t bite. This weekend, a few boats stuck it out and ran all the way to San Luis where they found some good schools of tuna again. The wind forecast for next week looks good, so we are excited to explore more of San Luis Bank and see if the tuna bite will remain consistent once again.
Bottom action is showing good signs as we continue to see good numbers of grouper, snapper, triggerfish, and amberjack. This week, we also heard of the first few yellowtail caught in the area; some nice 20-30 pounders. Most bottom activity is coming from sardines and jigs, though some big fish have been lost with live bonita/skipjacks and green jacks (cocineros). The fleet caught a nice 78-pound amberjack with a live bonita at Iman. The fleet continues to catch great numbers of white bonita while fishing for tuna. We also saw a few wahoo caught this week at Iman; most of them caught on live sardines by accident. The highlight was a nice 40 pounder caught on a jig! We heard of a couple nicer wahoo lost while trolling rigged ballyhoo and Rapalas earlier in the morning.
Since many boats focused closer to shore this week, we saw lots of Sierra at the fillet station and released many roosterfish. The roosterfish bite with live sardines at La Laguna has been full of action. Some boats reported catching and releasing double digit numbers. Most of these Roosters are averaging 10-15 pounds. While fishing the shoreline, we have also been able to catch Sierra and Jacks.
Good Fishing, Brian
