Anglers
As we now settle into the heart of the winter season, tourists visiting the Los Cabos area continue to enjoy excellent weather conditions. Days have been sunny, with highs in the low 80s and early morning lows in the 50s. Up until now the predominate winds from the north have been lighter than normal and the ocean water temperatures have remained several degrees warmer than normal, now averaging 70 to 73 degrees. Currents have been strong, producing rapidly fluctuating clarity, not uncommon to see greenish water turn blue in a matter of a couple of hours, this has affected the fishing action accordingly. Off of San Jose del Cabo other are good supplies of sardinas being netted by the commercial fleet each morning, now found in the area of Cardon, though mackerel have become scarce for the past week, as have the giant squid.
The surface action has continued to be outstanding for local San Jose fleets, particularly on the fishing grounds from the Gordo Banks, Punta Gorda, La Fortuna and to Iman. Normally at this time anglers would be expecting to target sierra, smaller roosterfish and a mix of bottom species, but instead there has been great opportunities at yellowfin tuna in the 20 to 80 pound range, dorado ranging 10 to 40 pounds and even a very good chance at hooking into one or more wahoo, which would normally be only a dream during the month of February.
The main spots where yellowfin are now being found are near La Fortuna, within a couple of miles of shore, more often than not the best bite occurs later in the morning, best techniques has been to chum the fish into a feeding mood and drift fish with either live or dead sardinas. These yellowfin are averaging 30 pounds, with many going more than 40 pounds. There are tuna to 80 pounds or more in good numbers on the Inner Gordo Bank, but getting them to strike among the big schools of skipjack has been a challenge, the few that were hooked into were on strip bait from giant squid or chunk bait from skipjack. Lots of baitfish activity on the bank, including huge numbers of flying fish and the tuna could be seen feeding on them as soon as they reentered the water.
Some big dorado are being found on the same fishing grounds, while smaller to medium sized dorado are being encountered closer to shore, including right in the surf zone and off of the Puerto Los Cabos jetty. Anglers that targeting the tuna were generally averaging three to six fish per trip, along with several dorado mixed in. Not much found off the bottom recently, the current is just too strong to concentrate on the rock piles.
Punta Gorda continues to be the best area to search for wahoo, the bite has varied from dead to wide open, depending when you were there and what baits or lures you were using. These wahoo, when active, would readily strike on mackerel, sardinas, yo-yo jigs, Yo-Zuri, Rapala and skirted lead heads. The wahoo that were being found had mostly been juvenile fish under 20 pounds, but this past week a group of larger fish moved into this region and many wahoo to over 40 pounds were landed.
Biifish action continues to be centered on the Pacific fishing grounds, with the lack of mackerel now off of San Jose del Cabo the striped marlin bite that had begun to develop has weakened and we will have to wait for more concentrations of the mackerel to migrate into the direction of the Sea of Cortez.
The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 72 charters for the past week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
3 sailfish, 5 striped marlin, 5 hammerhed shark, 33 bonito, 295 yellowfin tuna, 205 dorado, 46 wahoo, 64 sierra, 25 roosterfish, 14 amberjack and 48 mixed pargo species.
Good fishing, Eric
