October 25, 2020

With the resurgence of corona virus cases in areas throughout the U.S. and with the upcoming election we are seeing fluctuating numbers of visitors, less than half the amount than we would expect for this time frame. Though locally the tourist industry is following strict health protocols and the situation seems under control, people are just nervous about dealing with airport travel and worried about the whole deal. The richest marlin tournament in the world was held this week, with some 129 teams battling for a record sum of 4.6 million dollars. The event ran for three days and there ended up not being any qualifying fish over 300 lb. landed, so there were no huge pay outs this year, though there were several stories of huge fish being lost, which if landed would have been worth millions. We will hope for better results next year.

With ocean temperatures in the upper 80s conditions seemed unusually wam, though presently we are feeling a cooling trend and the coming week is forecast to bring more north wind and cooler temperatures, so we should also see water cool off and are hoping the all-around action improves. Anglers were using sardinas, slabs of squid mainly for bait, with some larger baitfish found on the fishing grounds as well. Schooling sardinas were now more abundant along beach stretches near Chileno.

The highlight this week was a 311 lb. yellowfin tuna that was weighed in on Saturday, taken by a group of anglers on the local sportfisher “Bacco” out of Puerto Los Cabos after a 3 1/2 hour battle on the Gordo Banks. The overall tuna bite was very slow this week, another 110 lb. tuna was brought in from a super panga mid-week and a scattering of a few other yellowfin in the 30 to 70 lb. class, but limited numbers. Most of these fish were taken near the San Luis Bank. One factor on the slower action seems to be the added pressure of all of the Ease Cape charters also traveling long distances to congregate and fish on our local grounds.

Wahoo were becoming more active, still spotty, but a couple of charters ended up with between 3 and 5 wahoo per morning. Most of this action near Iman Bank and further north while trolling Rapalas, sizes ranged to over 40 lb. We expect this wahoo bite to improve in coming weeks as water cools some. Dorado action was sporadic as well, some days we were seeing decent numbers of fish up to 15 lb., while other days we would only see a fish or two.

Not much reported off the bottom, a handful of various pargo species, bonito and even some out of season roosterfish caught near shallow rock outcroppings, a couple of these over 40 lb.

A few sierra were starting to show up as well, as their season will just be getting underway.

Good fishing, Eric