GORDO BANKS PANGAS
November 17th, 2024

Fishing remains very similar to last week. We are getting sardines from the bait guys every morning, though they have been getting them to us a bit later, at around 6:40-7:00 am. They are netting the sardines towards Cerro Colorado/Palmilla shoreline. For the boats that do not want to wait for sardines, there are strips of squid available earlier in the morning for sale. Both bait sources have been equally productive for tuna. Some of the bigger tuna this week were hooked on strips of squid. Since most of the yellowfin are running small (5-10 pounds), we are using lighter tackle (30# test). A handful of bigger tuna (60-80 pounds) were caught this week on this lighter tackle, some boats taking over 2 hours to land these fish. While drifting for tuna, we are also catching dorado, though nothing big at this time. We did see a nice dorado, around 30 pounds earlier in the week, one of the bigger ones we have seen in the last few months. We did see more dorado than last week, which is a great sign. We also caught white bonita and sierra (Spanish mackerel) while drifting squid and sardines. We also had some nice snapper and grouper while drifting strips of skipjack. If the current allows it, this is definitely something to try.

We had our annual local wahoo tournament this Sunday and it was a close one. Surprisingly, not many wahoo came to the scales. Out of 25 boats, only 4 wahoo were brought in. The winning wahoo came in at 41.8 pounds. Congratulations to Captain Freddy and Chame for placing second with a 41-pound wahoo on team Burro. Third place belongs to captain Fernando on the 30ft “Tiburon” with a 40 pounder. All of these wahoo were caught fast trolling X-Raps and Nomads. We did not hear of any wahoo caught on bait this tournament. More strikes came from Vinorama and Iman. The wahoo bite was spotty this week, lucky to get one or two strikes throughout the day. Only 2 dorado came in, biggest one weighing 11 pounds. It was a challenging day for the small pangas as it was blowing 15-18 knots.

We are hearing more reports of striped marlin. The reports that came in this week fished areas 14-20 miles from our marina, offshore from Palmilla and Cerro Colorado. While waiting for sardines early in the morning, some boats have also landed a few smaller wahoo at Palmilla Point on Rapalas.

Good Fishing, Brian