Light crowds of tourists now, as school semester’s soon finish, we will see greater numbers of vacationers arrive. At this time the season’s first tropical storm has developed off of the coast of mainland Mexico, named Andres, this system is forecast to follow a more westerly path, keeping it well away from any impact with land. As Andres brewed some 500 miles to the south, the weather became more tropical, feeling like summer, warm and humid. We do expect to see higher ocean swells develop over the weekend. Water temperature temperatures have ranged from 72 degrees on the further Pacific banks, up to the 78/79 degrees in the vicinity of the Outer Gordo Banks.
There were variable gusty winds out of the north and switching from the south, on and off throughout the week, this made for unpredictable conditions offshore. Most consistent action found was for striped marlin, this action centered straight offshore from San Jose del Cabo, with more billfish being found from 10 to 15 miles from shore, though some stripers were encountered much closer in. Many charters were accounting for multiple billfish days, two, three or more marlin, striking on lures, as well as taking dropped back baits. Large number of sharks were encountered on these same grounds, to the point of being a nuisance, quite hefty, brown variety, strong fighters, taking up a lot of angler’s time.
Action for other species was limited, though some charters were able to land two or three wahoo while trolling lures, mainly Rapalas, off of the Red Hill area, some strikes were taken on rigged baits as well, most of these were smaller sized ‘hoo, up to 25 pounds. Dorado were few and far between, though on occasion a boat would come in with two or three fish, most of these under fifteen pounds.
Only a handful of yellowfin tuna were reported, a few larger tuna were hooked into on the Gordo Banks, fish were strong enough to break leaders, over one hundred pounds, these hook ups were lost for various reasons, so the tuna are in the area and with warmer tropical conditions forming, anything could happen on any given day.
With limited numbers of charters and breezy conditions, there was not much bottom action reported, even when weather cooperated there were just not many structure species accounted for, strong current was a contributing factor.
Close to shore anglers found action for roosterfish and jack crevalle, though this action was hit or miss, we have not seen many mullet moving into to local waters yet, this migration of baitfish is what normally brings in the big run of larger sized roosterfish. This is the time of year when we can see dogtooth snapper close to shore, we have not seen these powerful snapper yet, typically found near the rocky reefs.
Still no sign of a resource for sardinas, with higher surf conditions on the way, most likely the bait situation will remain the same, with caballito, moonfish and ballyhoo being offered inside the marina at launch time.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 52 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 38 striped marlin, 26 dorado, 6 yellowfin tuna, 24 wahoo, 4 amberjack, 3 pargo colorado, 18 huachinango,13 cabrilla, 12 yellow snapper, 10 jack crevalle, 18 roosterfish and 10 bonito.