GORDO BANKS PANGAS
September 22nd, 2024

We started focusing on Iman Bank this week as the water is clearing up after the storm pushed in green water. This area holds a lot of bait, specifically small skipjacks and some schools of bulito. That said, these waters can also be infested with sharks on some days. We are catching small yellowfin tuna, though the skipjacks are winning most of the battles to the bait. Most of these tuna are small, averaging around 5 pounds, though some nicer, 30-50 pounders were spotted chasing the live sardines. The biggest tuna caught at Iman this week was close to 70 pounds. This was over an hour fight with 30# test.

There is also a good chance of landing a few dorado in this area, though nothing big at this time. We are using live sardines. The bait guys have been netting sardines towards Palmilla’s shoreline. A few nice wahoo were also hooked earlier in the morning while trolling rigged ballyhoo and XRaps at Iman and La Fortuna. Within the same area, a handful of sailfish were also landed, some of them pushing the 100-pound mark, good fight on light tackle.

This weekend, a group of 5-6 boats decided to specifically look for porpoise schools to target yellowfin tuna with live sardines. As they were headed out, they encountered a good school of them a few miles out from the Outer Gordo. They were successful as most of the boats landed their 5-tuna per license limit within the first couple hours. Most of these tuna were averaging around 20 pounds.

We are still hearing reports of Striped and Blue Marlin offshore on lures and rigged ballyhoo. A couple Black Marlin were also spotted in between the Outer and Iner Gordo. The boats that tried trolling live skipjacks had difficulty due to Sharks eating the bait as soon as they started trolling. On the days where the Sharks weren’t too bad, some boats were able to drift strips of skipjack for Dogtooth Snapper. A few of them were landed at the Inner Gordo.

Good Fishing, Brian