March 16, 2013
Anglers –
Up until now we are only seeing moderate crowds of visiting spring break vacationers, though this coming week will be a very busy time for local residents. The annual San Jose del Cabo Fiesta Week has just begun, many events are planned, including a world class full length triathlon, off road vehicle race, carnival rides, fishing tournaments, etc.. Should be a fun time for all, but remember that there will be some annoying street closures during this period, traffic and parking will be challenging. The weather is now as nice as it gets, scattered cloud cover, residing winds, with high temperatures up to 85 degrees.
With the spring time fishing season just starting to show signs of coming to life, anglers are still finding the action to be up and down. Northern winds have been more persistent than usual this year, they do seem to be tapering off some now, ocean water temperatures are ranging 67 to 73 degrees, at this time there is a warming trend and this should help improve the all around conditions. Baitfish schools have become scattered for the past week, some days there have been reports of balled up mackerel found offshore and along the shoreline near San Luis is where schooling sardinas are being netted, tides and increased swell activity made this job tougher for commercial pangeros.
Charters launching from Cabo San Lucas Marina are finding large numbers of yellowfin tuna in the 15 to 20 pound range on the Pacific side near the San Jaime Banks, los of porpoise activity in this same area. This action is out of range for the San Jose fleets, though there has been a chance at hooking into a much larger sized yellowfin tuna on the Gordo Banks, only a few of these fish have actually been landed, but these tuna are all in the 50 to 200 pound class. We are hopeful that some warmer weather can help improve this action. There are some yellowtail on these banks as well, but only a handful are being landed, too many hammerhead sharks on the same grounds, makes fishing with bait impossible and the yellows are not consistently striking on yo-yo jigs at this time, preferring the same larger baitfish that the sharks do.
Fleets based out of La Paz and the East Cape region reported great yellowtail action on the days that the north winds allowed them to comfortably reach the grounds. The overall bottom action for the San Jose fleet has not been up to expectations, mixed success for various pargo species, amberjack, cabrilla and an occasional yellowtail. This is never peak season during this time frame and we do expect to see improved action with the arrival of spring just around the corner.
After last week’s wide open striped marlin bite around the Gordo Banks the cooler windy conditions over the weekend scattered this bite and just in the past couple of days we are starting to see more marlin showing up within local charter boat range. We do expect that the main concentration for striped marlin will now shift to the grounds from San Jose del Cabo towards the East Cape, this is the typical pattern. This is also the time when whales move out of this area and head to their northern summer feeding grounds.
The fishing close to shore remains consistent for sierra, with a few dorado mixed in. More sierra action than anything else, sizes ranging up to 5 pounds, using live sardinas for bait was the best bet, slow trolling or drift fishing. A handful of much larger dorado were found further offshore by charters targeting billfish.
This week the combined panga fleets launching out of Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 68 charters and anglers accounted for a fish count of: 16 striped marlin, 22 yellowfin tuna, 26 dorado, 315 sierra, 8 roosterfish, 16 amberjack,18 cabrilla, 33 various pargo species, 8 yellowtail, 1 wahoo, 15 bonito, 3 mako shark and 25 triggerfish.
Good Fishing, Eric