March 28, 2015
The spring season is a great time of year to enjoy all that the Los Cabos Area has to offer. The climate is now ideal, lots of sunshine, low temperatures in the 60s and highs in the upper 80s. Winds can still be a bit unpredictable, though the persistent northerly winds are not nearly as relentless as during the winter months. Ocean conditions were improved, after going through a cooling trend and having clarity fluctuate. Now anglers are reporting very clean water and temperatures averaging 74 to 75 degrees. Still heavy concentrations of whales being seen, though with the progressively warming days, we expect that these whales will be migrating back north soon.
Fishing action has been changing from week to week, not an overabundance of billfish being found offshore now, no large concentrations of baitfish for these fish to feed on. Only a scattering of striped marlin, these fish had been found mainly 20 some miles offshore, but this past week we have seen marlin moving much closer to shore, traveling in the warmer clean currents, searching for a food source. Except around the certain high spots where skipjack have dominated the food chain. Bait sellers have been working hard to net sardinas in the surf zone near Vinorama, most days they were able to find sufficient supplies, though there were a few days where the combination of higher swells and early morning low tides made for dangerous navigation and resulted in limited bait resources.
It truly has been an unusual new season, changing rapidly, going from wide open yellowfin tuna action, then a complete dead drop off, then the yellowtail broke loose on the Gordo Banks, then this fell off and the action once again was on the San Luis Bank for yellowfin tuna and this week surprisingly good action for wahoo, who would figure that during the month of March we would be seeing more wahoo than sierra, which is the species of mackerel that we regularly find during this time. This year we have seen mixed up migrations for various bait and gamefish species, much better action for yellowfin tuna that we normally find during February and March, now with wahoo being another bonus catch. The yellowfin tuna are striking on sardinas near San Luis, ranging in size from 20 to 35 lb. Also a few dorado in the mix, we did see one bull of over 30 lb. brought in, that was an exception though, the majority of the dorado were smaller in size.
Last week it was the yellowtail that saved the day, now we are hooking the elusive wahoo, many on sardinas while using straight monofilament being targeted for the tuna, hard to entice a strike if usual the more visible wire leader material. Some wahoo were also hooked into while trolling with chiuil, caballito, ballyhoo or Rapalas. The average sized wahoo were in the 10 to 20 lb. a few smaller and a handful of larger fish, these fish are definitely a bonus, while other species were hard to find, the wahoo is a popular fish and can be hard to find even when they are in season, now they are biting, even though this is not the normal time of year when we would expect to find them.
Bottom fish action has not been dependable, though anglers targeting this action did find mixed success for snapper, bonito, pargo, cabrilla and yellowtail.
Inshore there has not been any consistent bite, not many sierra, considering this is now peak season for them, only small schools of roosterfish being found, most of these smaller sized, found along the stretch just south of Punta Gorda and towards the marina jetties.
Will be interesting to see what happens this coming week, nothing would surprise us at this stage, we have seen a lot of unusual patterns this year.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 62 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 5 striped marlin, 64 wahoo, 31 dorado, 55 yellowfin tuna, 18 sierra, 74 Eastern Pacific bonito, 17 cabrilla, 22 huachinango, 9 roosterfish, 18 yellowtail, 9 barred pargo and 14 yellow snapper.