Gordo Banks Pangas
San Jose del Cabo
March 2, 2008
Anglers -
While the United Sates continues to feel the effects of winter, especially towards the eastern seaboard, Southern Baja actually had more of a feeling of spring this past week as we were greeted with the year's first heat wave, temperatures reached into the 80s, clear skies, more than enough sunshine and diminishing northern winds. All this added up to great times to enjoy and take advantage of the outside activities. Ocean conditions were on an improving trend, water temperatures ranged from 67 to 72 degrees and cleaner blue water was returning closer to shore.
The more consistent fishing action was found closer to shore and off the rocky bottom high spots. The striped marlin action continued to be at a standstill, very few marlin were accounted for by the combined fleets. Though there was some encouraging news of reports of yellowfin tuna being caught 25 to 30 miles offshore. These fish were found traveling with porpoise and were nice quality, 20 to 40 pounds, found straight out from Cabo San Lucas to Chileno. Would be nice if this action became consistent and moved closer to shore and of course we are crossing our fingers that the commercial tuna pursein fleet does not get word of this and clean these fish out in one quick sweep.
Schools of nice sized sierra had moved into the areas north of Punta Gorda, especially at San Luis, but sure enough the commercial gillnetters from the fish camps in this same uncontrolled region did quick work on these fish. It is incredible they can still get away with this indiscriminating destructive form of fishing, amazingly we have not heard of any trapped whales, since there have been so many in the area now and they frequent these same inshore waters.
Surf conditions increased in recent days and this made it difficult for the pangueros to net sardinas. For anglers that were able to obtain sardinas they found limited action close to shore, a mix of sierra, roosterfish and yellowtail, most of these species were weighing less than ten pounds.
Larger yellowtail in the 25 to 40 pound class were holding on the rocky high spots throughout the area and anglers working iron yo-yos or drift fishing with live mackerel landed some of these brutes, though numbers were not significant, all of these fish were quality. Mixed in were amberjack of 10 to 40 pounds and more huachinango
(red snapper) are now being accounted for, these fish are striking bait or yo-yo's and weighing 6 to 12 pounds. Mexican bonito have continued to be the most numerous fish found on the rock piles, striking on iron jigs near the surface to the middle of the water column. Once located these fish were very aggressive and hard to keep off the lines, ranging 4 to 6 pounds. To round out the bottom action there were a few cabrilla, these fish usually are more abundant at this time, but have been running behind schedule, we expect they will become more prevalent as the currents slack up some and the water conditions stabilize. In the mean time anglers that are familiar with techniques involved in working the yo-yo jigs, they have been producing the majority of the quality fish that are now being accounted for.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 62 charters for the week and anglers reported a fish count of: 3 hammerhead shark, 13 cabrilla, 21 amberjack, 22 yellowtail, 142 huachinango, 410 Mexican bonito, 52 sierra and 15 roosterfish.
Good Fishing, Eric
