September 14, 2013
Anglers –

Local weather has settled down this past week, this has given the area a chance to dry out after all of the recent rainfall. The desert landscape has transformed to a lush green color, days remain warm, with scattered tropical cloud cover and high humidity. With each passing day we are starting to feel a hint of fall in the air, particularly early morning. There is now a low pressure system developing off of the Southern Mexico mainland coast and we will be monitoring its progress closely, as this is the time when the local environment is favorable for tropical storms to form rapidly.

Crowds of tourists are light now, this is the time when family priorities shift towards starting the new school year. It will be soon enough when the busy fall fishing season is in full swing. For the anglers that are making the trip they have enjoyed great fishing action in recent days. Most consistent bite has been found on the areas north of Punta Gorda, from La Fortuna to San Luis Bank, for yellowfin tuna and dorado. Ocean current has been swift from the south, this has made any bottom fishing that much more difficult. Water temperatures are in the 84 to 87 degree range, clear blue conditions are found within a couple of miles from shore.

Squid has been the best bait for the yellowfin tuna, the giant squid are being jigging up by the commercial fleet in dark hours and sold to charter boats in the morning, there are also limited supplies of caballito, still no sardinas available. Drift fishing with strips of squid on light tackle has been the best bet for catching limits of yellowfin tuna, the fish were now larger than in previous weeks, averaging 15 to 20 pounds. The larger cow sized tuna that were starting to show up on the Gordo Banks have not been active this past week, though surely they are still in the area, we expect these cows to become more active soon.

Dorado schools have been spread throughout the area, found by trolling lures and baitfish. The majority of the fish have been smaller sized, though with patience anglers have been able to find some larger sized dorado mixed in. Limit on these fish is two per license and the inspectors are enforcing these regulations. Only a few wahoo being accounted for, they become sluggish in the warmer water, we expect that these speedsters will become more active as fall conditions transition in the coming weeks.

Billfish have slowed this past week out of San Jose del Cabo, only scattered reports of mostly smaller sized striped marlin, surely there are black and blue marlin lurking on the grounds, they just are not readily striking lately, the way the conditions are anything could happen on any given day.

No inshore action being reported, bottom action was limited to a handful of amberjack, pargo and grouper, though no numbers to speak of, though a few impressive fish were accounted for, amberjack up to 78 lb. and one grouper over 100 pounds landed by a La Playita commercial pangero, current has been relentless, hard to effectively drift fish the bottom structure when moving so fast.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 75 charters this past week with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 3 striped marlin, 8 wahoo, 5 amberjack, 2 grouper, 16 red snapper, 300 black skipjack, 415 yellowfin tuna and 550 dorado (many released).

Good fishing, Eric

September 7, 2013
Anglers –

Southern Baja has recently experienced a series of tropical storm systems, in the past couple of weeks the area has felt the effects from Ivo, Juliette, Kiko and this Thursday, TS Lorena. Lorena was a minimal strength tropical storm, but nevertheless when making direct impact, can make a mess of things in a hurry. We expect to see red flag closed port conditions through Friday and most likely part of Saturday, likely that sportfishing fleets will be back in operation for Sunday.

These back to back storms have repeatedly stirred ocean conditions, just as patterns seem to stabilize, another system develops, creating stormy offshore conditions, strong currents have been rampant, pushing around dirty water, particularly near shore, baitfish become more scattered as well. Then as the weather settles this cycle can rapidly reverse, fishing action can get back on track in a matter of a day or two.

Just like the weather has been rapidly changing, so has the all around fishing action. For the fleets launching out of Puerto Los Cabos Marina the most consistent bite has been for yellowfin tuna and dorado in the area of San Luis and Vinorama. Fresh squid has been available from the commercial fleets, actually these smaller sized giant squid are now being caught in local waters during the dark of night. Using strips of these squid was producing great action for the smaller sized football yellowfin. Same for dorado, they were hitting on squid, as well as caballito and a wide variety of trolled lures. The majority of the dorado were juvenile sized, these fish should be carefully released, a handful of larger respectable sized dorado to 10 or 20 pounds were accounted for. Anglers found fast action, though most of the fish were not large sized as is anticipated during late summer.

The larger cow sized yellowfin have been taking up residence on the Gordo Banks, just starting to arrive the last couple of weeks. No big numbers of these fish are being reported, but there have been around a half of dozen cows (yellowfin tuna 200 lb. or larger) landed landed from local boats. Recent trend has been an afternoon bite, during the early hours the current perhaps has been just too strong and the tuna have been more actively feeding later in the day when the current was slackening. Hard to figure their feeding patterns, this was a scenario that occurred last September and October as well, mainly local anglers capitalizing, charter boats regularly depart early in the morning and return early afternoon.

Options for anglers were somewhat limited, surface trolling baits or lures and also drift fishing over high spots. Strong currents made any deeper bottom fishing more difficult and it was not very productive even when able to reach the depths, the fish do not like fighting the swift currents either. A few red snapper were in the mix, an occasional amberjack or dogtooth snapper, but not many numbers. We expect that once currents do reside that we will find better results off of the structure.

Billfish bite slowed through the recent storm fronts, as weather settles we anticipate improved action for all of the sought after gamefish.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 41 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 3 striped marlin, 4 sailfish, 180 yellowfin tuna, 192 dorado, 2 wahoo, 3 amberjack and
15 huachinango (red snapper).

Good fishing, Eric

August 31, 2013
Anglers –

This past week we witnessed how late summer tropical climate patterns can change within a matter of hours. After enjoying relatively stable conditions for a couple of weeks, this all changed on Wednesday afternoon, as a disorganized low pressure system all of a sudden developed into Tropical Storm Juliette. Within 12 hours this storm passed directly over Cab San Lucas and continued towards central Baja. TS Juliette traveling at a rapid pace, 30 mph hour, not giving much of a chance to gain more strength, this was fortunate, as not a lot of damage was reports, normal low land flooding and some moderate wind damage, as gusts of 45 mph were steady and even higher winds of 75 mph were recorded in isolated areas.

Sportfishing fleet were shut down for last Friday and Saturday due to high swells and rain caused by TS Ivo and once again there were closed port red flag conditions on this Thursday, before reopening for Friday morning, as ocean settled down and skies cleared. The next few weeks is always a time when weather forecasts are monitored closely.

Most consistent fishing action recently has been for dorado, found scattered throughout the region, traveling in schools of various sized fish, the majority of which have been juvenile sized, though there is a percentage of much larger dorado mixed in. There have been increasing numbers of wahoo being reported, striking mainly on lures, over the traditional high spots, as well as in the open blue water. This is favorable sigh to see this many wahoo so easy in the season, as they normally become more active later on in the fall.

There was excitement on the Gordo Banks, as the season’s first large sized yellowfin tuna are moving on to these grounds. On Tuesday there were several big tuna landed, up to 250 pounds, many other hook ups were lost while battling huge tuna on heavy gear, the word traveled quickly, on Wednesday there were heavy boat pressure and the big tuna did not want to cooperate, though some of these cows were seen briefly feeding on surface. Anglers have been using various baitfish, bolito, skipjack yellowfin, chihuil and strips of fresh squid. As weather settles down we anticipate this action will only improve, everyone is tuning up their heavy gear, so that can be best prepared to battle these giants. There are football sized yellowfin tuna being found throughout the zone, sometimes they have been associated with porpoise, but often just encountered by blind strikes while trolling hoochie type lures and cedar plugs.

Inshore action has really come to a standstill, this is normal during this period of higher swell conditions, which also scatter inshore baitfish schools. Not much bottom action now due to the continued strong current, a handful of red snapper found alongside the anchored commercial fleet. Most consistent fishing has found near the surface, charters are using a combination of lures and the available baitfish. Anglers now have a chance offshore of hooking into a grand slam of billfish, as there are striped, blue and black marlin, as well as sailfish all present on the offshore grounds.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 45 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 4 blue marlin, 2 black marlin, 8 striped marlin, 5 sailfish, 84 yellowfin tuna, 162 dorado, 4 wahoo and 18 huachinango (red snapper).

Good fishing, Eric