Anglers –
November 19, 2016
The fall season is now starting to wind down, still quite busy this past week, with visiting anglers and sun worshipers, though not quite as crowded as it was the previous weeks. With Thanksgiving Holiday scheduled this next week, we will see more families arriving, though many people do prefer to stay at home for these holidays and from now until Christmas Holidays we will see the normal slack period for tourists, this is just not the time frame that many people are traveling, as they are more preoccupied with the approaching holidays.
We felt strong north winds through the first half of the week, then we had a couple of very calm days, before the wind picked back up late in the week, crazy weather patterns, still quite warm, reaching near 90 degrees. Ideal temperatures actually, early morning lows averaging 70 degrees. Early week there was a late season Tropical Storm Tina which formed farther off to the southwest, as fast it had developed, it dissipated, as it moved over cooler water. All around the water temperatures from Cabo Sab Lucas towards Los Frailes has been ranging from 82 to 85 degrees, three or four degrees warmer than what would be normal for this time of year. This should prove favorable for fall type fishing action to last all the way through December.
Bait options continued the same, slabs of squid, caballito, ballyhoo available from bait vendors and opportunities to catch skipjack and chihuil on the offshore grounds, for use trolling live or drift fishing as. Combined factors of swells, strong northerly winds and the full moon phase, made for several tougher days, though anglers did catch some quality fish. Most productive areas were from Chileno, Gordo Banks, 1150 Spot and Iman Bank. Most common gamefish being encountered were yellowfin tuna, wahoo, dorado, and late season black and blue marlin.
Yellowfin tuna action was good to start off the week, increased wind made it tough to drift fish on the Outer Banks, but some quality sized tuna were accounted for, quite a few fish to 100 lb. and at least a half of dozen over 200 lb. Also there was good action found a couple of days for smaller tuna found traveling with porpoise, close to shore and moving fast, strips of squid was the main method of hooking up. The larger yellowfin were striking on baits such as skipjack or chihuil, either drifting or slow troll, in the vicinity of the Outer Gordo Banks. Same grounds have been producing some billfish strikes, both black and blue marlin were hooked into. One angler had quite a story of hooking into a 40 lb. plus yellowfin tuna, then during the fight a huge black marlin inhaled the hooked up tuna and the battle was on with the marlin, as the fish was spooling off hundreds of yards of line and being chasing down by the super panga skipper, after close to 30 minutes of that the marlin heading deep, line went slack and then heavy again, but now the marlin had spit out the three and a half foot tuna, which to their amazement was still alive and continued to fight until they brought it to gaff, this whole scene took over two hours.
Wahoo was the main species being targeting closer to shore, from Cardon to the Iman Bank, good numbers of these prized fighting fish were being accounted for. Trolling with live chihuil was the most productive, ballyhoo and caballito worked as well. Also limited numbers hit on trolled lures, though far more strikes were reported on bait, versus lures. Many fish were seen following baits, but were finicky at times, other times action was fast and furious, with wahoo fishing, a good average percentage seems to be about one fish actually landed for every three strikes, many things happen, very fast fish, with hard bony jaws, slashing at baits, not just strike and swallow like most fish. Many charters accounted for two, three and even up to five wahoo, sizes ranged from 20 to 45 lb.
Dorado numbers increased toward the end of the week out of San Jose del Cabo, still only a handful of these fish being found in this area, more number were reported from the Pacific, though reports were varied from different sources. We saw quite a few dorado in the 15 to 20 pound class, though we had more wahoo in the fish counts.
Bottom fishing was very limited, only an occasional snapper and triggerfish, wind made this even harder, water temperature still warm, more bottom action when currents cool some. Commercial pangeros did catch a few nice sized yellowtail off of the Gordo Banks, so that is encouraging, maybe something will happen on this. We do expect to be targeting the tuna, wahoo and dorado through this month and next. No inshore action to report, except for a few roosterfish and sierra.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 166 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 3 blue marlin, 4 black marlin, 4 striped marlin, 4 sailfish, 320 yellowfin tuna, 46 dorado, 165 wahoo, 11 yellow snapper,4 leopard grouper, 12 bonito, 14 huachinango, 4 roosterfish, 14 sierra,14 rainbow runner, 6 surgeonfish and 45 triggerfish.
Good fishing, Eric