GORDO BANKS PANGAS
November 19th, 2023
We are now heading into the last couple weeks of November and the weather continues to be nice and warm. We had a few days this week with temperatures in the high 80s. Early morning at the marina are nice enough to continue wearing shorts and sandals.
The main target species has changed this week. We have been focusing more on Wahoo and Dorado, but most specifically Wahoo. We have seen quite a few caught this week, best action so far was Saturday; we had one boat come in with 4 nice 25–30-pound Wahoo while losing a couple more. Most of these wahoo are nice sized, with some 40+ pounders in the mix. One of our charters caught a 57-pound Wahoo on Saturday. This has been the biggest Wahoo seen so far this year at out panga area.
Most of these Wahoo have been caught with a variety of deep diving Rapalas earlier in the morning. It has been beneficial to put in a couple of hours early in the morning towards fast trolling Rapalas and ballyhoo. We are shifting to live/dead bait later in the day. The bigger Wahoo have been hooked on live chiwili. The main hot areas for Wahoo have been Palmilla, Iman, Fortuna, and Vinorama. Many of the boats have been focusing on looking for big wahoo as we have a local wahoo tournament today. That said, the boats have been catching chiwili at the inner Gordo and then spreading out to Palmilla or Iman to cover as much ground as possible. Most of the bigger wahoo have been spotted at Iman.
Using the same technique, many boats have been catching their limit count for dorado with some nicer ones in the mix. A few Sailfish and Striped Marlin have also been hooked while slow trolling live bait. While slow trolling, it has been productive to cast some flashy jigs on the surface. Some nice Sierra and Wahoo have been hooked with this technique as well.
There are still big Tuna at the Gordos. There is a good chance of hooking a nice yellowfin while drifting strips of squid or slow trolling some chiwili or small skipjacks that you can catch on the same grounds. The biggest tuna weighed in this week was at 103 pounds, caught on a live chiwili. We had another yellowfin estimated at around 110 that we were not able to weigh as the anglers arrived later in the evening.
At the inner Gordo, there is a good chance of hooking a few dogtooth snappers and bared pargo. Most of these were hooked with a strip of skipjack.
Some smaller Tuna (20-40 pounds) have been spotted at Iman and Vinorama banks. A few boats were able to catch a couple with some live and dead sardinas. This bait has mainly been early in the morning and dies off at around 9 am. The sardina supply has remained consistent for the last few weeks, though these baits are not the best size, too small even for the smallest hooks we are using.
We are excited to see what the biggest wahoo will be throughout our local wahoo tournament today. Many of our captains will be participating in this tournament and we are hoping to see some big fish at the scale.
Good Fishing, Brian
