GORDO BANKS PANGAS
December 1st, 2024
The main highlight this week was the wahoo bite picking up, specifically on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, we had at least 25 wahoo at the fillet station, between 8 or 9 boats. One of these boats was able to land 7 nice wahoo, while losing 4-5 others. Most of these wahoo were hooked on X-Raps, Nomads, and rigged ballyhoo earlier in the morning. The best action came from Vinorama. A few wahoo were also caught at San Luis and Iman. The average wahoo is in the 28-to-35-pound range. The biggest wahoo caught this week was a 54 pounder on live bait. The bigger wahoo were caught on live bait. The boats that used live bait had to bring it from other areas in their tuna tubes. Small skipjacks and bulito are being caught at the inner Gordo and Iman and taken to Vinorama for slow trolling. It didn’t take too long before a wahoo was chasing the small skipjacks and bulito as we have not seen much bait at Vinorama.
Most boats focused on wahoo for a couple hours in the morning and then transitioned into tuna. For tuna, the fleet reported more action at Vinorama this week rather than Iman. These tuna are football size, though we have seen more of the bigger ones landed (50-80 pounds). We are now using strips of squid to drift for tuna. The bait guys haven’t had much success finding the right size sardines. The sardines they were netting weeks before at Palmilla’s shoreline have been running a bit too small for our use. The bait guys continue to look throughout other shorelines to let the other ones grow.
A few miles offshore from Palmilla and Cerro Colorado, many boats have started focusing strictly on striped marlin. Best action seems to be coming closer to shore, 4 to 5 miles. This bite has been consistent on most days. We are using ballyhoo and lures. Throughout our shoreline, we are catching small sierras on small rapalas.
We continue to see bigger yellowfin tuna offshore with the porpoise. Most of these porpoise schools were spotted 40-50 miles from our marina, in the direction of Cabo San Lucas. Most of these tuna are nice size, averaging 30-50 pounds, though there is a good chance of hooking into a bigger one. We are catching the bigger tuna on strips of squid. A handful of 150-200 pounders were landed this week.
Good Fishing, Brian
