Anglers –
August 28, 2016
Light crowds of tourists visiting at this time, weather patterns continue to be very tropical, hot and humid, chances of thundershowers forecast throughout the week, though we did not see much rainfall, except on Tuesday afternoon, when a major electrical storm passed through the area, vicious thunder and lightning strikes, which left most of the region without power for a couple of hours, two inches or more of rain fell in a matter of 30 minutes, then skies cleared back up just like that. The latest Tropical Strom Lester is far off to the west, having no impact on land, though the ocean swell did pick up some, as we saw surf over two meters high pounding the shoreline. Winds have been light for the most part and just this morning we felt that slight hint of fall season in the air, as early morning was slightly cooler than it has been for the past couple of months. Water temperature is ranging from 80 to 85 degrees, coolest area right close to shore off of Cabo San Lucas.
Anglers have been using strips of squid and live caballito for bait, also some skipjack and bolito being caught on the fishing grounds and being rigged for larger gamefish baits as well. The Gordo Banks have been producing some of the larger fish as usual, though numbers of actually fish landed from these grounds are low, a handful of black marlin hook ups, one yellowfin tuna caught by a local pangeros estimated at 280 lb. earlier in the week, another later in the week at 130 lb. Lots of sharks again biting on these same banks. Anglers used larger whole baits or drift fished with strips of squid. Clean blue water, lots of natural food source as well, stronger than usual currents running, these can be factors why the bite is not what we would expect for this time of year, of course this can change, just as fast as the weather can.
The action around the Iman Bank has been a bit more productive and chance at more variety. This is where anglers are hooking into some yellowfin tuna that have been averaging 20 to 40 lb., most of these have come on strips of squid, again no numbers, anglers lucky to land one or two of these tuna.
A handful of dorado are being accounted for, but not in any quantity, most of these fish have not been larger than 15 lb. Striking on trolled lures and various baits, no particular location, scattered throughout the area. Very few reports of wahoo that we heard of, they can become more dormant when water temperatures reach the mid-80s. Not much bottom action found this past week either, more triggerfish than anything else, swift current makes it hard to effectively fish the structure. We did hear of one 80 lb. class amberjack, when currents slack we do expect to see more options off the bottom, time of year we can see some quality grouper and dogtooth snapper.
Not much inshore action now, more jack crevalle than anything else. Surf conditions are up now, this scatters baitfish schools, normal pattern for late August.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 52 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 1 black marlin, 3 blue marlin, 2 sailfish, 6 striped marlin, 33 yellowfin tuna, 36 dorado, 2 wahoo, 8 rainbow runner, 13 huachinango, 12 yellow snapper, 4 surgeonfish, 48 triggerfish, 3 amberjack and 8 jack crevalle.
Good fishing, Eric