Anglers –
November 12, 2016

This past week was one of the busiest of the entire year, large crowds of anglers continue to arrive in the Los Cabos area and the whole town is bustling with business. Weather conditions are now typical for the fall season, early mornings have a slight chill, down into the mid to upper 60’s, daytime highs have been reaching into the upper 80s. So far winds have been moderate, with the breeze picking up predominately from the north later in the day. Ocean swells have been minimal, water temperature have dropped slightly, now averaging 84 degrees, about 81 degrees on the Pacific side on Cabo San Lucas.

Local fleets have found the most productive action from the grounds off of Chileno Bay, north to the Gordo Banks and Iman, even as far as Vinorama. The overall fishing action improved this past week, the first couple of days of the week the wahoo action went wide open on the Iman Banks, charters were landing up to five of six wahoo during a morning trip, with many other strikes also being lost, fast and furious action. The wahoo were ranging in size up to 45 lb., with the majority of strikes coming on live baits, such as caballito or even better, chihuil, which can be caught early on the Inner Gordo Bank. Some anglers had success trolling rigged ballyhoo, Rapalas or even casting bombs and yo-yo’s. This action tapered off through the rest of the week, but we were still seeing a fair amount of wahoo being brought in each day.

The most common species continue to be yellowfin tuna, these schooling fish were being found mainly on the Gordo Banks and around Iman Bank. Drift fishing with strips of squid or slow trolling chihuil proved to be most successful. Sizes ranged from 10 lb. to 250 lb. Most fish were in the 20 to 30 lb. class, but this week we saw more 100 lb. and heavier fish than during previous weeks. With the largest fish coming from the Gordo Banks.

We also started to see more dorado show up in the fish counts, still no significant numbers, but at least we are finally seeing some nice dorado, we saw bulls up to 25 lb. These fish were found scattered throughout the area, sometimes not very far from shore, where ever there might be concentrations of baitfish, with frigate birds circling overhead, that was a good place to try.

Billfish were more active around the 1150 spot, though a few were also found on the Gordo Banks and further north. A mix of sailfish, blue, striped and black marlin were all accounted for. There were reports of blue marlin over 300 lb.

Not much being found off the bottom, besides triggerfish, a few miscellaneous pargo/snapper species and an occasional leopard grouper. Inshore a few more sierra showing up, though we will see more when the water temperature cools off more. An occasional roosterfish still around late into the season, including some being found on the offshore high spots.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 240 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 2 black marlin, 6 blue marlin, 4 striped marlin, 7 sailfish, 720 yellowfin tuna, 42 dorado, 140 wahoo, 14 yellow snapper, 7 leopard grouper, 15 bonito, 22 huachinango, 7 amberjack, 5 roosterfish, 31 sierra, 22 rainbow runner, 8 surgeonfish and 125 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric