GORDO BANKS PANGAS
October 20th, 2024
Busy week at both marinas, especially in Cabo San Lucas. The Bisbee’s Los Cabos Offshore tournament was from the 16th to the 18th, 3 days of intense fishing. Most of our top captains participated in this tournament. Big congratulations to team “Burro” with Captain Chame, Freddy, Pollo, Lalo, and Maury. They landed a 387-pound Black Marlin on the 3rd day of fishing, winning a total payout of $518,500. They are ready for the next Bisbee’s tournament starting on the 23rd of this month.
A day after the tournament (October 19th), Captain Chuy decided to go out solo as he had a late-notice cancellation the day before. Chuy hooked a 450-pound Black Marlin at around 10 am at the Outer Gordo in between many big boats preparing for the next tournaments. He hooked this fish on a small live skipjack on only 80# fluoro as he was looking for tuna. After a long and tiring fight, he was able to land this fish at around 4:00 pm. His younger brother Gerardo was able to hop on his boat to help finish the battle. This fish would have gotten 2nd place at the Bisbee’s. The biggest marlin at Bisbee’s was 467 pounds.
On our end, the highlight this week was a wahoo bite towards Vinorama and Iman. On Friday, captain Tony was able to land 4 nice wahoo. He had 7 strikes, most of them on X-Raps and Nomads DTXs, one bite came on a rigged ballyhoo. We also saw a decent bite on Thursday as Captain Chuy landed 2 nice ones on ballyhoo. Most of these wahoo are nice sized, averaging around 25-30 pounds. We did see a couple wahoo over 40 pounds this week. This bite remained spotty throughout the weekend as we only saw a few more landed throughout all of the fillet stations.
At Iman, we are also starting to see nicer yellowfin tuna in between the small footballs. This week, we saw 3 tuna in the 60–70-pound club. These tuna were caught on light gear (30# and 40# test) as the average tuna was 5-6 pounds. Most of these tuna were caught on strips of squid since live bait was hard to get. Most of the Bisbee’s boats got priority on the live sardines. There is plenty of bait throughout our shoreline, with most of the concentration towards Palmilla Point. As the big boats were buying $200-$300 worth of sardines, it left the smaller pangas with only a handful of sardines. We still continue to catch small yellowfin towards Cabeza de Ballena and Cerro Colorado, though the bite has been mainly early in the mornings when the boat count is low. Trolling Rapalas, ballyhoo, and lures in that area has also produced some wahoo and dorado stikes. Most of the dorado we are seeing are on the smaller side, averaging around 8-12 pounds.
Earlier this week before the tournament started, a few boats were able to fish the bottom at the Inner Gordo successfully. There was plenty of action drifting with strips of skipjack for dogtooth snapper. One of the boats within the fleet was able to land 4 nice dogtooth, while losing a few other in the rocks.
Good Fishing, Brian
