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WEATHER Hot and humid were the words to describe this week. Our daytime temperatures were in the high 90’s with 80% humidity and nighttime lows in the mid 80’s and no change in humidity. Mostly sunny skies this week, even on Saturday when we had a short downpour of rain the sun was shining!
WATER: The water everywhere was almost glassy on a few days with the Pacific side having small swells at 1-3 feet with gentle winds from the northwest. On the Cortez side it was just flat with a bit of wind ripple. Water temperatures on the Cortez side up around Punta Gorda were in the 88-degree range while just off the arch and on the Pacific side of the cape the water was a little cooler at 84-85 degrees. It was blue water everywhere you went.
BAIT: Caballito and Mullet were available at the normal $3 each but on a few days they were a bit harder to get. Boats going up the Pacific side were stopping at the Golden Gate Bank to make bait as there were some small, scattered schools of Mackerel down deep.
FISHING:
YELLOWFIN TUNA The Tuna action this week was considerably slower than last week. According to Mike Tumbrillo, the owner of the 31’ Bertram “Renegade Mike”, his crew searched several days but were not able to find the big fish that had made an appearance last week. There were schools of fish in the 30-40 pound class to the west of the San Jaime Bank as well as 30 miles to the southwest, but the big boys were absent. Boats willing to go the distance did fairly well, averaging 2 to 10 fish per trip. Cedar plugs and green or dark colored lures run close to the boat worked well, with a few of the larger fish biting on live bait dropped back after a trolled lure hook-up.
DORADO Once again, just like last week, Dorado were the fish of the week. While not everyone caught their limit this week and there were a couple of slow days, the numbers were still good and the average size of the fish was decent. Most of the fish were found on the Pacific side of the cape but the reason was most of the boats headed that way looking for Tuna and Marlin, the Dorado were not the target for most of the boats this week. Reports from the few boats that went north on the Sea of Cortez were that the Dorado were there as well but you had to find the concentrations. A few boats did this by fast trolling lures until getting a strike, then chumming in the school with chopped up skipjack.
WAHOO I did not hear of any Wahoo this week, but I am sure there were a few caught.
INSHORE: Captain Victor on the Panga “Santi” reported that there were still Roosterfish to be found on the stretch of beach between the arch and the Pedregal. His clients released two fish of about 25-pounds each along with several smaller one during the middle of the week. Most of the Pangas were fishing just off the beach for some of the large numbers of Dorado, and they were doing very well. Bottom fishing was reported as being a bit off with the majority of fish caught being triggerfish.
NOTES: If you are interested in fishing with any of the Captains or boats mentioned above, feel free to drop us a line, we will be happy to set you up for a trip. Meanwhile, if you like good guitar playing, see if you can find the song “Not One Bad Thought” by Tony Joe White with Mark Knopfler. I bought a disc with the radio version and the extended version and was blown away by the playing. Well, until next week, tight lines!
George & Mary Landrum, Juan & Manuel
Report: SAN JOSE DEL CABO, September 28, 2008
The long hot summer season is over and fall has officially started. Crowds of visiting anglers have noticeably increased and will continue to do so throughout the rest of the year. The weather is now in seasonal transition, cooler mornings, but the days are will quite warm and humid. No new tropical storms have developed from the south, but with ocean water temperatures in the mid to upper 80’s it is hard to predict what might happen from day to day, typically by the second week of October the real chance of destructive storms occurring is over.
There continued to be good supplies of sardinas being found off of the La Playita area, throughout the summer the baitfish were found inside the Puerto Los Cabos Marina channel, but now the schools of bait have moved back outside, on either side of the open ocean beach stretches near the rock jetties. Fleets have been fortunate this year with such a steady supply of the sardinas, they have proved to be the preferred baitfish for most of the more frequently targeted medium sized gamefish.
The action this past week has really busted wide open for yellowfin tuna and dorado. Dorado have been found throughout the area, from the Pacific to inside the Sea of Cortez, striking on all types of lures and even more so on slowly trolled bait. Average size fish was in the 10 to 15 pound class, though many nicer specimens to 25 plus pounds were also being accounted for. The most consistent bite for yellowfin tuna was found from close offshore of Punta Gorda to the Iman Bank. Drift fishing with live or dead sardinas was most productive, also slow trolling with the same baitfish. The majority of the yellowfin ranged 15 to 20 pounds, but this past week also saw a much better quality of tuna showing up on these same fishing grounds, as many tuna in the 40 to 60 pound class were also landed. The tuna could being seen feeding on the free swimming baitfish and swimming through chum lines, most of the time they were not that line shy, though lighter sized leaders and fluorocarbon were still the hot ticket. So far things are really shaping up for a great fall season. The wahoo have also started to get into the show, becoming more active in recent days, though not many anglers were targeting because the tuna and dorado bite was so good and once they loaded the fish boxes with limits it was more important to have their catches filleted and put on ice as soon as possible. One panga charter on Wednesday reported having six wahoo strikes while landing two fish in the 30 to 40 pound class while trolling rapalas and Yo-Zuris near the Iman Bank. Perhaps there will be a banner year on wahoo like there was a few years back.
We did not hear of much billfish action off of the Gordo Banks region this past week, just an occasional sailfish or striped marlin being hooked into. Not many anglers have been trolling the larger tuna or skipjack baits, as serious big marlin anglers know, you have to put in your time, there can be long time periods of slow trolling without action, but when the strikes occur and the fire drill starts, there is not many other fishing experiences that can equal the adrenaline rush of a huge freshly hooked black or blue marlin gray hounding towards the horizon.
Local surf fishermen did report a few more trophy sized snook being landed off of the beach area just to the north of the new marina, the fish were hooked on live sardinas.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 57 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of:
4 sailfish, 2 striped marlin, 3 hammerhead shark, 11 wahoo, 12 giant squid, 48 miscellaneous pargo species, 3 yellowtail, 466 dorado and 349 yellowfin tuna.
Good Fishing, Eric
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