October 12, 2013
Anglers –
Scores of anglers continue to arrive in Los Cabos, anticipation is high, as this is always the most popular season for a variety of gamefish and weather conditions are ideal. Skies have been clear, plenty of warm sunshine, highs of about 90 degrees. Early mornings now have a fall chill to them, winds were increasingly unpredictable this week, at times blowing hard from the south, then the next day from the north, this pattern limited where sportfishing charters could comfortably fish, though for the most part ocean conditions were pleasant. Water temperatures are still about 85 degrees in the direction of the Sea of Cortez, Pacific waters are slightly cooler. Strong currents have persisted, though have slacked at given times, blue water is now found closer to shore, though choppy conditions for a few days stirred the visibility up a bit.
The bait situation has been limited to purchasing fresh dead squid from vendors at the dock area, some live caballito and other small jacks available after launching, no reports of finding new sources of sardinas, a few rumors being spread that so and so netted some of these baitfish somewhere, though definitely not found in any quantity to support the local fishing fleet at this time, makes us wonder if this will be the season we do not even see sardinas until winter time, migration patterns can be altered, maybe this is what has happened, this is normally the time when we would find schools of sardinas holding along inshore rocky beach stretches.
Panga fleets encountered the most consistent action on the fishing grounds from Iman, San Luis and north to Vinorama. This is where the majority of charters are concentrating; even the fleets from the East Cape are making the long run south to get into the action. Using strips of squid while drift fishing over the banks have produced good numbers of yellowfin tuna in the 8 to 15 lb. range, at times a larger grade of tuna to over 20 pounds were located. Dicing squid into small pieces for chumming the fish to the surface has been the ticket, at times this has also been attracting dorado, wahoo and even sailfish or striped marlin. Everyday there have been reports of wahoo landed by chance on the strips of squid on monofilament, though anglers specifically targeting wahoo with lures or larger baitfish, rigged on wire leaders have not been reporting much at all, at least this is what is reported out of San Jose del Cabo, there were additional reports of wahoo being hooked off of Cabo San Lucas grounds while trolling open waters, same areas where good numbers of dorado are being accounted for, though not much tuna action being reported out of Cab San Lucas.
Only a few reports of larger yellowfin tuna being hooked into on the Gordo Banks, these fish are still holding on the banks, though have not shown in any significant numbers yet this season, nevertheless this is the spot where many top teams will be concentrating on during the tournaments. Recent trend for taking a strike from a large tuna, has been while trolling larger baitfish such as bolito or skipjack, these baitfish are schooling on the same banks, though can be finicky to catch at times.
Not that much bottom action being reported, strong currents and limited results has seen more charters targeting the available surface species. A handful of nice red snapper (huachinango) were taken on yo-yo jigs, as well as a few amberjack, rainbow runners, bonito, cabrilla, grouper, pompano and even one nice roosterfish hooked off the bottom on the Iman Bank.
Billfish action has been spread out, no particular hot spot, sailfish and striped marlin are being hooked into on the same grounds where the schooling yellowfin are, a few reports of strikes on larger trolled baits, the same football sized tuna work ideal for trolling for black and blue marlin, though we have not seen any significant numbers of the larger marlin. Surely the main concentrations of stripers are now congregating near Magdalena Bay.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 182 charters for this past week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of: 3 roosterfish, 2 pompano, 11 striped marlin, 15 sailfish,1 black marlin,14 wahoo, 28 bonito, 8 amberjack,10 rainbow runner, 4 dogtooth snapper, 32 huachinango, 7 pargo colorado, 13 cabrilla, 11 grouper, 910 yellowfin tuna and 195 dorado.
Good fishing, Eric