March 30, 2013
Anglers –
This is Easter Weekend, probably the busiest period of the year when local families gather and enjoy fun times on all of the accessible pristine beaches. Many neighboring businesses shut down operations for a three or four day period, as they become short staffed due to the holiday. Lots of spring break visitors now in the Los Cabos area, majority here to enjoy the climate, outdoor sporting activities, all around ambiance and of course the famous night life, only moderate numbers of anglers in town at this time, even though the fishing action is shown signs of breaking wide open.
We are now witnessing crazy weather patterns during this seasonal transition period, the wind has not been as persistent as during the winter, though it still has been unpredictably picking up and swirling form different directions erratically. Days are progressively on a warming trend, perfect climate now, barely need a light jacket early in the mooring and with the rising sun the days have been comfortably reaching into the 80s. Next weekend is when the local time change will occur, clocks will be forwarded one hour, seems strange now as the sun is rising around 6:00 a.m. Ocean water temperatures had plummeted last week after a Pacific current was swept in, dropping to 65 degrees in places, now currents have switched directions and clean warmer water has pushed back in, average water temperature is now in the 70 to 75 degree range, there were isolated spots of even higher temps.
The majority of the sportfishing fleets are now spread out searching the offshore fishing grounds from straight outside Cabo San Lucas, to the 95 and 1150 spots, to the Gordo Banks and north towards Desteladera. The striped marlin action was more scattered than how they had found groups of feeders last week, the billfish were striking on lures in the bluer water, also taking dropped back baits, a few nice sailfish were reported in the warmer waters as well. Yellowfin tuna action was hit or miss, most of the tuna that were found were associated with porpoise pods, which were passing through anywhere from 8 to 20 miles offshore. Sometimes the yellowfin tuna were mixed underneath the porpoise and would readily strike on cedar plugs, feathers and bait, but other times no action at all was found and the better report for all around activity found was much closer to shore.
Inshore, off of the San Jose del Cabo grounds, anglers were finding lots of schooling baitfish breezing on the surface, they could be jigged up on sabiki type rigs, mostly mackerel and sardinetas, both great bait for a variety of species. Dorado were found in smaller sized schools and in no particular area from day to day, best bet was where the concentrations of baitfish were, these fish were ranging up to 20 lb, some charters landing three or four on an outing.
Anglers found the most exciting inshore action to be for the prized yellowtail, finally we are seeing some good numbers of these powerful jacks, quality sized fish, ranging 15 to 30 pounds, following the schooling baitfish. On Thursday, charters found great surface action for hog sized yellows just on the other side of Punta Gorda, casting fly lined baits into the baitfish schools resulted in solid hook ups. It is encouraging to see these gamefish finally making a significant presence in local waters, when we kept hearing about all of the wide open action for yellowtail off of Cerralvo Island, where they have been reporting an unprecedented frenzy on big yellows for several weeks.
Sierra and some impressive size jack crevalle rounded out the inshore action. Off the bottom there were some nice amberjack found, mixed in with the yellowtail and a variety of pargo, a few cabrilla in the counts as well.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 74 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 4 wahoo, 14 striped marlin, 3 sailfish, 36 yellowfin tuna, 122 dorado, 18 amberjack, 68 yellowtail, 165 sierra, 45 pargo,14 cabrilla, 10 bonito, 8 roosterfish and 9 mako shark.
Good Fishing, Eric