June 10, 2011

Tropical storm season is now officially on track, before summer has even started. Some 500 miles south of Cabo San Lucas Hurricane Adrian quickly developed over warm waters and strengthening to a category four storm, the system was following a more northwesterly course, keeping it distant from land. It does not appear that Southern Baja will receive any much needed rainfall from Adrian, most likely all that will be felt, is increased humidity and larger ocean swells through the weekend.

Weather conditions for late spring were ideal, very few clouds in the sky, high temperatures close to 90 degrees, variable breezes from the Pacific were keeping things comfortable. A marine layer has been hanging over coastal stretches, spots of occasional fog. Strong ocean currents were sweeping in murky water closer to shore, though clear blue water has been found within five miles of shore. Ocean temperatures are mostly in the 78 to 80 degrees range. More flying fish spotted offshore, as well as schools of skipjack and bolito. The annual migration of schooling mullet has been late to arrive this season, but in recent days there has been an increase in activity. Anglers have hooked into roosterfish to forty pounds in recent days, though roosters in the 10 to 15 pound range have been more common. We expect to see the peak run of larger sized roosterfish to appear within the next few weeks, should be exciting. It is also the time when dogtooth snapper and amberjack follow bait schools close to shore.

Anglers can find a variety of options now, offshore looking for striped marlin, dorado and yellowfin tuna, to trolling over the ledges for the elusive wahoo, taking a look off the rock piles for snapper, amberjack or grouper, then there is the option of slow trolling live baits over the inshore rocky outcroppings for a chance battle with a bruiser of a dogtooth. In recent days there has been a great variety of fish encountered, though none of these species, with the exception of huachinango (red snapper) were found in great number.

The grounds near La Fortuna to Iman Bank were attracting schools of red snapper (huachinango), perhaps the small jelly fish bloom in the same region has brought these fish here. At times the ocean surface would turn red as the snapper came up to feed. Anglers were landing easy limits of five fish per person, for snapper that ranged 5 to 10 pounds, they were readily striking on yo-yo style jigs throughout the water column. A handful of yellowtail to 30 pounds were also landed, there were increasing numbers now for amberjack, including quality sized specimens of fish to 60 or 80 pounds. These fish were hitting on both yo-yo jigs and drifted baits.

Last weekend we saw more dorado in the counts, fish up to 40 pounds, throughout the week, variable currents have scattered the dorado, only an occasional fish or two being found, as conditions settle we expect to see more of these fish. Same deal for wahoo, everyday there are reports of a few fish landed and others lost, wahoo to 68 pounds were weighed in this past week, many others up to fifty. Encouraging to see such quality this early in the season.

Striped marlin action, which has been off the map for almost a month now, has tapered off this past week. Further offshore once again in cleaner waters, charters reported as many as five releases, others had one or two. The stripers were hitting trolled lures and dropped back live baits, mullet, caballito or jurelito, some larger stripers to 160 pounds were landed.

Yellowfin tuna are in the area, but have been difficult to entice on a daily basis and in any quantity. Though the quality was there, as at least several yellowfin over 100 pounds were brought into the La Playita panga docking facility in recent days. These tuna were found moving with small pods of larger sized dark porpoise, on the areas north of Punta Gorda to San Luis. There had been action for anglers on schooling sized tuna up to 20 pounds off of the Chileno area, but this action came to a standstill as the water became off colored in that area.

The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 104 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:

5 sailfish, 29 striped marlin, 42 dorado, 20 yellowfin tuna, 46 amberjack, 9 yellowtail, 6 dogtooth snapper, 566 red snapper, 15 wahoo, 62 roosterfish, 24 jack crevalle, 16 cabrilla, 7 pompano, 28 bointo and 8 sierra.

Good fishing, Eric