November 22, 2020
Weather has been great, warmer than usual fall conditions continue. There has been some persistent wind out of the north, but close to shore anglers were able to find fish in more protected areas. Water temperature now in the 79 to 81 degree range, slightly warmer than we would expect during this time frame. As the busy fall season now winds down, we are dealing with the second wave of Covid pandemic worries, though locally we have not seen a surge in cases and safety protocols have been strict, people are living in fear as to what is going to happen in the coming months.
Schools of sardinas remain healthy near the marina jetties, also some caballito being found. Other bait options included ballyhoo and slabs of squid. The majority of charters are now heading towards the north, from the Gordo Banks, Iman, San Luis and to Vinorama, while a few boats are working areas from San Jose del Cabo, south towards Cabo San Lucas. Action has been somewhat spread out, no particular hot spot. Most popular grounds this week were Iman and San Luis, this is where the better chances at hooking into the yellowfin tuna was.
The tuna proved increasingly finicky this past week, most days the yellowfin were seen in good numbers coming out of the water, putting on a show boiling on the chummed sardinas, but were extremely line shy. It did not make sense to use leader lighter than 40 lb., because chances of landing these fish on too light of line was minimal, the average fish that were being landed were in the 50 to 75 lb. class, some larger and a few in the 20 to 30 lb. range as well. Overall anglers were doing very well if they landed one or two of these tuna, though there are definitely lots of these fish in the area and on any given day could become more cooperative.
Through the first half of the week there was very good action for wahoo found near Vinorama, these fish were coming up on the chummed sardinas and hitting the small baits on straight mono, not the normal way we usually fish these toothy gamefish, skippers were using small long shanked hooks to help from getting cut off, the wahoo did not like the wire leaders. Many of the wahoo were hooked up on cast yo-yo type jigs, at least as many hook ups were lost as were brought to gaff. Of course the word on this good action traveled fast, scores of spear fishermen also headed to this inshore spot and the bite slowed way down just as fast as it had developed.
Dorado were scarcer this past week on the grounds off of San Jose del Cabo, most of the fish we did see were very small, though we did hear of better numbers towards the Pacific.
On the Gordo Banks there have been anglers targeting cow sized yellowfin, a couple of big fish were lost after extended battles, we did not hear of any other monster yellowfin being landed. There were at least a couple of black marlin that were brought in, these fish were in the 300 to 600 lb. range. We do believe that more big tuna are still on these grounds and certainly another will be hauled in before long.
Not much being found off the bottom besides triggerfish, bonito and mostly smaller sized snapper. Along the shoreline there have been sierra, but not consistent from day to day, still early in the season for these cooler water species.
Good fishing, Eric