Anglers –
March 25, 2017

For some reason this week was not so busy with tourists, in between waves of spring breakers perhaps. The annual San Jose del Cabo traditional Fiestas have come and gone now without any major incidents, though they are still in the cleanup process on the grounds adjacent to the baseball park. Ideal weather patterns continue, still a bit cool early in the morning, but daytime temperatures have been reaching into the mid-80s, clear warm sunny skies. Still good numbers of whales being seen, this now being their late season, getting ready to migrate back to the northern feeding grounds.

Ocean swells increased this week, making it very difficult for the bait netters to reach inshore rocky areas where the sardinas were schooling. Other bait sources included limited caballito, ballyhoo, squid and red crabs. Larger crabs were once again found drifting to the surface on the Outer Gordo Banks and were being gathered for use for bottom fish action. Currents have varied, not being quite as strong as they had been, winds were a factor later in the week, then settling down for the weekend. Ocean temperature ranged from 68 to 74 degrees through most of the region, with the warmest areas being offshore of San Jose del Cabo some 6 to 8 miles. Blue water has been found within several miles of shore.

Last week the big news was a great bite for wahoo during a time frame that is not typical for this elusive gamefish, as they were found in schools close to shore off of Punta Gorda. The combination of heavy pressure for multiple days and ocean conditions that cooled off and became a bit greenish contributed to that action fading out. This week the most productive bite was for red snapper, or locally called huachinango, these are the true Pacific red snapper, found over offshore structure, striking readily on various crabs baits, a few on yo-yo jigs as well, these extremely prized eating fish average in the 5 to 12 lb. range, very scrappy fighters on lighter tackle. The largest sized snapper were recently coming from the Outer Gordo Banks, while other areas closer to shore were producing a smaller grade or snapper.

Not much going on for any surface action now, anglers at times were seeing the yellowfin tuna showing on the surface, but they proved very finicky and with the lack of sardinas due to higher surf conditions, this made it difficult to entice any tuna strikes, very few were landed this past week. Dorado were even scarcer and the billfish bite has been late to get going. We did hear of reports of striped marlin near the 1150 high spot and even a couple of dorado, this area had warmer water temperatures, so maybe something will finally start to happen offshore.

Inshore there has not been much besides some sierra and triggerfish, as water starts to warm back up, we should see the juvenile roosterfish move in. Then later in the spring as the mullet show up, that will attract the larger roosters and other jacks.

The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 60 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 9 yellowfin tuna, 6 amberjack, 14 yellow snapper, 11 flag cabrilla, 13 leopard grouper, 420 huachinango, 21 sierra, 105 black skipjack and 95 triggerfish.

Good fishing, Eric