We are now winding down the busy fall season, typically after Thanksgiving we see a lull in tourist activity, as people begin planning for the Christmas and New Year’s Holidays. There were moderate crowds of anglers this past week and weather patterns were increasingly unpredictable, more north winds, most of the week it blew, limited options for anglers, even on the days when forecast predicted lighter breeze. Ocean swells were minimal, except for wind chop on offshore grounds, water temperature was still averaging near 80 degrees. The wind contributed to pushing in currents that were not as clean blue as in previous weeks, a bit off colored. Weather was actually very comfortable now, highs about 80 and lows down to 63 degrees., scattered cloud cover, but also plenty of sunshine.
Sportfishing fleets were fishing the grounds from Palmilla, straight off of San Jose del Cabo, Gordo Banks, La Fortuna, Iman, San Luis and as far north as Vinorama. Most popular grounds were the Iman Bank where wahoo schools were concentrated, bite varied from day to day, as pressure was fairly heavy and these fish became finicky with all the boat traffic. Best chances were trolling live baits such as caballito or chihuil, though dead bait work at times, as did casting yo-yo jigs. We saw wahoo in sizes from 15 lb. on up to one monster 60 lb. ‘hoo that was weighed in on Saturday. On some days charters had as many as five wahoo, others were fortunate to land one, of course as is normal, many of the wahoo strikes were lost, one out of three always seems to be a pretty good average for hook up to actual landing ratio.
These same grounds also produced dorado, a handful of yellowfin tuna, sailfish and striped marlin. Dorado were not nearly as numerous as in recent weeks and most of these were under ten pounds and exception of a few to 15 lb.
Best local marlin bite was found straight off marina, 3 to 5 miles offshore, this is where schools of mackerel are showing and attracting striped marlin. A couple more black marlin were landed from off of the Gordo Banks, these were in the 300 to 350 lb. range. One 239 lb. yellowfin was also landed off of these banks, a couple of other cow sized tuna were lost after long battles, as they were seen circling near the boat but ended up breaking off. We expect that chances for these larger fish will continue as long as conditions remain favorable.
Not much to report off the bottom or near shore, a few sierra were brought in, bonito and triggerfish. Hopefully schools of sardinas will rebound soon, they always are a preferred bait for the inshore and shallow structure action.
Good Fishing, Eric