Anglers –
May 2, 2015

Starting another new month, May is a great time of year, progressively warming weather, as we get into the later part of spring, at times it can be quite warm, near 90 degrees, though evenings still cool off and all around the climate is very nice, normally anglers find calmer ocean conditions and action can include options from inshore, offshore and on the bottom structure.

This past week we saw the changing climate apparently affected how the fish acted, school of sardinas vanished near Vinorama where they had been, now we have larger sized baitfish available, caballito, jurelito, ballyhoo, bolito and chihuil. The yellowfin tuna action came to a standstill, dorado and wahoo were also very scarce. Best action for this past week has been for striped marlin, thrasher shark and miscellaneous structure species, with the prize being the true Pacific red snapper, locally named ”huachinango”. The snapper are striking best on small pelagic red crabs, which have been hard to obtain, limited supplies were being imported from the San Carlos region, none of the crabs locally have been drifting to the surface, so there is no way to catch them, they sure do make good baits for these snapper.

An occasional amberjack, yellow snapper, whitefish, bonito, triggerfish and cabrilla has been rounding out the caches off o the rocky reef areas. Anglers were using mostly various whole or cut bait, a handful of fish were taken on yo-yo style jigs.

Striped marlin were active all week, ranging from the 1150 spot to outside of the Gordo Banks, the billfish were striking on lures or rigged ballyhoo, as well as on chihuil or caballito. Anglers that drift fished with baitfish down deeper were hooking into thrasher shark, many of these hard fighting sharks were hooking into, fish to 200 lb. were landed, more fish were lost than were actually landed. Most of the striped marlin have been in the 90 to 120 lb. class.

Here was not much going on close to shore and with a large swell forecast to sweep through the area this weekend we expect this inshore bit to remain calm for the time being. A few sierra, jack crevalle, roosterfish, the majority were small fish. Baitfish could be seen congregated just north of the local marina jetties, but these were the clear soft sardinas, not the baitfish we prefer to use, do not seem to be attracting much.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 67 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:
23 striped marlin, 4 wahoo, 21 dorado, 19 sierra, 10 jack crevalle, 12 roosterfish, 8 amberjack, 138 huachinango (red snapper) , 18 cabrilla, 16 whitefish, 25 yellow snapper, 24 bonito and 40 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric