January 9, 2015
After one week of colder weather patterns we have now seen the winds calm down and a return to pristine conditions, clear skies and warm sunshine, with highs of 80 degrees. Incredibly ideal, considering the freezing forecast across much of United States and Canada. Crowds are relatively light now, as is normal right after the holiday season, great time to visit, airfares have dropped and the Los Cabos area has made impressive rebuilding headway, most areas are now back to normal, pre-hurricane status.
The colder currents pushing in the last couple of weeks have dropped ocean water temperatures into the 74 to 77 degree range, which would still be considered warmer than average by several degrees for this time frame. The cooler currents also brought in greenish colored water, which in turn scattered the pelagic gamefish, but now conditions are rebounding and opened up more options for anglers.
Anglers are using sardinas to fish close to shore and are catching good numbers of sierra, ranging to as large as eight pounds, these sierra were also striking on trolled hoochies and Rapalas. These fish, in the mackerel family, do prefer the cooler water. A mix of shallow water structure species are now becoming more prevalent as well, pargo, of several varieties, cabrilla, triggerfish, pompano, island jack, porgy, bonito, mero hawkfish, even sheephead, as well as and others, all very good eating fish, striking on various baits, as well as jigs.
Dorado were very scattered, but handful are being accounted for every day, most were under 15 pounds. Only a few smaller sized wahoo were reported, these were found in the direction of Cabo San Lucas. Yellowfin tuna had become very scarce during the windy days, but in recent days we have seen some nice yellowfin being accounted for from the Inner Gordo Bank, as well as from areas further north, near Vinorama. These tuna ranged in the 20 to 50 pound class, nice for winter time fish. Anglers were using sardinas, strips of squid and chunks of skipjack to entice these tuna. No great numbers, but there was a chance at catching several.
The striped marlin action continued off of San Jose del Cabo, anywhere from 3 to 6 miles offshore is where most of this action was taking place, concentrations of baitfish have been attracting the billfish and anglers were trolling and drift fishing with live baits, as well as casting into feeding fish when the opportunities arose.
If the weather conditions how it is at this time, we could all be in for some great winter action, hard to predict, but last year we had warm water all winter and chances are this season might be the same.
Many more whales are now arriving for their winter stay in the Southern Baja region, other attractions included manta rays, seas lions and porpoise.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 78 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 18 striped marlin, 3 wahoo, 27 dorado, 24 bonito, 15 white skipjack, 49 yellowfin tuna,140 sierra, 13 roosterfish, 1 sheephead, 15 porgy, 4 hawkfish, 65 various pargo, 8 island jack, 7 amberjack, 22 cabrilla and 30 triggerfish.