September 24, 2011

Well, it is now official, summer is over and we now start the fall season, anticipation is high for these most popular coming months. Tropical weather continues, the early mornings do feel noticeably cooler, though the mid day sun is still strong and humidity high. An extremely powerful storm has developed off of the Southern Mexican coast, named Hurricane Hilary, this system is projected to take a northwesterly path, passing approximately two hundred miles, plus or minus, to the southwest of Cabo San Lucas. So it does appear that the Los Cabos will not feel much impact besides outer bands of clouds, high ocean swells and stronger than normal winds from the south. The area could definitely use additional rainfall and with a slight northern swift of course, Hilary could bring local thunder showers. Ocean temperatures are ranging from 85 degrees near the San Jaime Bank to 89 degrees in the direction of Los Frailes, with no notable temperature breaks.

Fleets based out of Cabo San Lucas were reporting good action among the porpoise for yellowfin tuna in the 15 to 30 pounds class with many charters catching ten or more tuna. Most often this bite was found further offshore, often as far as 20 miles, same waters produced some scattered catches of dorado, though these fish were found in larger concentrations closer to shore, the majority of do dorado now in the area are smaller sized, same situation off of San Jose del Cabo, more numbers this past week, but practically all were juvenile fish.

Schools of sardinas have scattered from the Puerto Los Cabos Jetty area and now the commercial fleet is working hard to find sufficient supplies for charters, now netting off of Palmilla and towards Santa Maria. This has been the preferred bait for all around charter action and means back tracking for La Playita panga fleets, since they are now fishing in the direction of the Gordo Banks, La Fortuna and Iman Bank. Other bait options included various jacks and mullet, as well as skipjack and chihuil, which are being caught on the fishing grounds.

Hard to say for what reason, but this past week the local panga fleet reported lower all around fish counts, perhaps a combination of flat tides, strong currents and at times delayed bait delivery are were factors. Average catch per charter was one, two or three yellowfin tuna and similar counts for dorado, with a few bottom species mixed in. Lots of available food source for the yellowfin on the structure of the fishing grounds, on some days the fish became more active late in the day. We expect the bite to improve with more favorable tidal swings.

Not much being reported from the Gordo Banks in recent days, this is where the larger cow sized tuna were hooked in previous weeks. This action shut down, but we expect it to rebound as well. One 300 pound black marlin was landed from a panga earlier in the week. A couple of near cow size yellowfin were reported at the start of the week, but since then we have not seen them at our docks.

Fast current limited productive options off the bottom, just a handful of mixed pargo species, triggerfish, bonito, cabrilla and amberjack.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 57 charters for this week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 2 striped marlin, 1 black marlin, 4 sailfish, 1 wahoo, 132 dorado, 148 yellowfin tuna, 12 bonito, 6 cabrilla, 32 pargo, 21 roosterfish and 16 amberjack..

Good Fishing, Eric