May 21, 2023
Late Spring season now, weather patterns remain somewhat unpredictable and in transition. We have seen increased southern ocean swells as is expected for this time of year, ocean is progressively warming, now in the 74 to 76 degree range. Still dealing with north winds and also breezes swirling around from the south on the same days, making for chopped up ocean conditions and crazy currents.
Most fishing action is now taking place on the grounds from La Fortuna, Iman, San Luis and towards Vinorama. Billfish have been centered around the 1150 spot and to Desteladera. Striped marlin being the main deal, with a few scattered dorado mixed in. North of Los Frailes there are reports of yellowfin tuna traveling with porpoise, but this is more of a commercial or private boat situation because of such long range and fuel expenses.
Main bait source now was caballito and jurelito, not seeing sardinas, ballyhoo and slabs of squid were other options. A few yellowfin are being taken off of San Luis Bank, drift fishing while fly lining live caballito was most successful, anglers were lucky to hook up, but some boats even had a couple of nice tuna accounted for, size ranging from 20 to 80 lb.
On these same grounds we were seeing mixed success off the bottom, using a combination of bait, rapalas or yo-yo jigs. Species included bonito, red snapper, barred pargo, yellow snapper, amberjack, leopard grouper and others, all very good eating fish, though none of these fish were found in significant numbers, except for the white bonito, which seemed to prefer trolled rapala or caballito baits in recent days and were of larger size.
Limited charters going out again this past week, did see some roosterfish and jack crevalle action close in off the beach stretches, roosterfish to over 40 lb. were landed and released, though again we did not have many angles targeting these fish, good sign to already see larger sized roosterfish this early in the season, in our area the peak action for numbers of larger roosterfish is typically from mid June to mid July.
Good Fishing, Eric