May 24, 2014
Anglers –

The month of May is always a great time, with an all around climate, steadily warming days, increasingly tropical feeling and many opportunities for anglers, from offshore, bottom structure to trolling close to shore. All this to take advantage of, crowds are now moderate, as people remain busy, finishing school semesters, graduations, not to mention that this is a very popular time for marriages. Perfect time to head south and visit the Los Cabos area, in another month the weather is much warmer and the humidity rises. Recent daytime highs have been hovering around 90 degrees, scattered cloud cover, at times quite tropical, on Thursday we even had some rainfall, did not amount to much, but this was unseasonable and combined with the gusty winds from the southwest, resulted in many anglers canceling charters for that morning, even though by mid morning the front had moved through and the conditions ended up just fine. Crazy weather patterns this whole year, seems like a possible El Nino current has been developing, ocean temperature are now in the 80 to 82 degree range off of San José del Cabo and towards Los Frailes, even warmer outside near the Cabrillo Seamount.

Bait sources remained as they have been, live moonfish and on some days limited caballito have been available, along with ballyhoo for rigging. On the fishing grounds more schools of skipjack and bolito were reported and this will be another option opening up for anglers targeting larger sized gamefish. This is also the time we should see migrations of mullet appearing in local waters. We have heard no good news on any resources of sardinas being found anywhere in the Southern Baja, will be interesting to see if we have a fall run for these sardina baitfish.

The steady bite for striped marlin which was within a couple of miles of the marina channel entrance, slowed way down, this is where the billfish were feeding on smaller sized squid, apparently this food source must have moved elsewhere. Now the main action for striped marlin was 15 to18 miles straight outside of San Jose del Cabo, in the vicinity of the 1150 Spot. Large concentrations of marlin were found, feeding, tailing, free jumping, striking more often on baitfish, either slow trolled, or drift, with sinkers down deep, or fly lining near the surface. Many charters Accounted for multiple billfish, even four, five or six stripers per day was not uncommon. Sizes ranged from 80 to 130 pounds. There were quite a few thrasher sharks on these same grounds, most weighing in the 70 to 150 lb. range and giving anglers their best workout for their money in battling these powerful fighters to boat side.

We have heard of the yellowfin tuna action that has developed in the Los Frailes area, tuna ranging to over 100 pounds were found associated with porpoise, finicky to bite at times, but consistent trolling has been producing decent numbers for charters based out of the East Cape. Though this action is still out of range for San Jose del Cabo charters, we are hoping this activity shifts towards the south, to our normal San Luis, Iman and Gordo Banks grounds. This is the time of year when anything could happen on any given day.

Dorado remain scattered, some days there have been a handful found on the same marlin grounds and to the north where panga fleets have been working the various high spots, there have been schooling dorado encountered, mostly smaller sized. Hard to say what is going on with the dorado, we have heard reports of larger concentrations found off the East Cape as well, this can be the typical pattern, then the action moves our direction. Some anglers found wahoo between San Luis and Vinorama, trolling ballyhoo and rapalas seem to have taken the majority of strikes, still lucky to get one of these elusive fish, sizes ranged from 15 to 40 lb. Several wahoo hit on yo-yo jigs while anglers were drifting over high spots, targeting amberjack, snapper and grouper, which proved very hit or miss, a handful of quality specimens were accounted for the anglers that were persistent.

Roosterfish action was found along the coastal inshore stretches, but with the lack of any concentrations of mullet, this meant that the roosters were scattered and the action varied from day to day where they could be found, most of the roosterfish that did strike on trolled baits weighed in the 20 to 40 pound class.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 90 charters for this past week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 7 thrasher shark, 4 yellowfin tuna, 52 striped marlin, 14 wahoo, 2 sailfish,12 amberjack,9 cabrilla, 4 jack crevalle, 8 sierra, 44 dorado, 2 dogtooth snapper, 75 bonito and 72 roosterfish.

Good fishing, Eric