December 5, 2021 

Many tourists headed home after Thanksgiving vacation, though this week  remained quite busy with a new wave of vacationers. Weather patterns have been very pleasant, highs close to 85 degrees, with lows in the upper 60s, plenty of warm sunshine. As normal the winds from the north often can pick up later in the morning, this was pretty much the pattern through the week. Ocean temperature is now on a cooling trend, ranging 78 to 81 degrees. Water clarity was much improved throughout much of the zone. Main bait sources were caballito, ballyhoo and slabs of squid. Some charters were able to find chihuil, which be a bonus when targeting wahoo. Large mackerel schools now on the Pacific grounds and this migration should shift in the direction of San Jose del Cabo very soon. We have heard of reports of sardinas found near Cabo San Lucas, but none of these baitfish have been located within range for the San Jose del Cabo commercial bait fleet.

The majority of local sportfishing charters have been concentrating efforts on areas from Red Hill, Palmilla, Punta Gorda, Cardon, La Fortuna and Iman Banks. The overall action has been spread out, no particular hot spot, most common surface species were dorado, striped marlin and a handful of wahoo. Better chances at the wahoo were on the grounds north of Punta Gorda, anglers were using various baits and rapala type lures, the bite was very spotty, though some anglers were fortunate to land a couple of nice wahoo, largest we saw was a 58 lb. fish, with the average being in the 30 to 40 lb. class. We are seeing a few very small juvenile sized wahoo as well. Largest dorado we saw was about 20 lb., the majority were in the 10 to 15 lb. range. Most charters had only a few total fish per morning, tough overall bite. No yellowfin action found at all, only reports were from further offshore of Cabo San Lucas associated with porpoise, but very hit or miss as well.

Billfish were more abundant near Cabo San Lucas, though we are seeing striped marlin off of San Jose everyday as well, found throughout the offshore grounds, most within 5 miles of shore, sizes averaged from 50 to 100 lb., We saw a couple late season black marlin of 300 to 400 lb. brought in, as well a a few sailfish.

Inshore there were decent numbers of smaller sized roosterfish, most under 15 lb. this time of year, also some sierra showing close to shore. Off the bottom it was mainly triggerfish, a few misc. smaller sized snapper, cabrilla, bonito and tile fish.

Good Fishing, Eric