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Fishing Report for San Jose del Cabo, Baja
Capt. Eric Brictson
October 14, 2001
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Anglers -
October 13, 2001
The fall season is here, you can now feel it in the air, cool evenings and early mornings, with paradise like warm sunny days, pretty much the ideal climate. Tourists have started to arrive in greater numbers and this has been a welcome sight for everyone. This past week saw all the sportfishing operations reopen operations after being shut down by Hurricane Juliette on September 27, and daily activities are returning to normal, in most areas utilities have been restored, but other places still lacked water and telephone service. Drinking water, food and gasoline are all now readily available and the overall clean up efforts are progressing well.
Highway maintenance crews have months of repair work ahead of them, but for the time being traffic is flowing smoothly through the various detours.
Anglers found great action for yellowfin tuna and dorado. Panga fleets were fishing areas from Red Hill to the Gordo Banks and Iman, there is still much debris floating in the water but the bulk of it is now drifting further offshore. Water clarity is murky and greenish close off of the San Jose River area but within one or two miles from shore cleaner blue water is being found, water temperatures averaged about 78 to 80 degrees. There were very good supplies of sardinas off of La Playita and this have been the bait of choice for the tuna and dorado. The yellowfin tuna were caught throughout the region, with the larger tuna found on the Outer Gordo Bank, this is where the tuna consistently averaged 40 to 60 pounds and larger ones could be seen feeding on the surface. The tuna hit on live bait, along with chunk bait and on a variety of trolling lures. The bite did vary from one day to the next, with average catches of tuna being from 2 to 12 per boat.
Dorado fishing continued to be red hot, with schools of fish ranging throughout the area, from within a mile of shore to the farthest offshore fishing grounds. They were being found by trolling lures through the open blue water, color and style did not seem to matter much, and on floating debris they were particularly congregating in big numbers. Very aggressive, they would hit on just about any type of bait you offered them, especially sardinas and strip bait. Most of the Dorado averaged 10 to 20 pounds, though there were quite a few larger bulls of 30 to 55 pounds being accounted for.
Other catches included skipjack, bonita, rainbow runners, amberjack, cabrilla, whitefish and pargo, these were mostly under 15 pounds and limited to a few fish here or there. There was not much talk about big marlin being encountered out on the Gordo Banks, though the tuna and dorado were keeping anglers very busy. There were reports of good numbers of striped marlin showing up off of Chileno, some 8 to 10 miles out, and the cruiser fleet had good success with lures and bait.
No bite on wahoo to speak of, just an occasional fish being found by anglers trolling lures, the fish averaged 30 to 50 pounds, but the numbers were insignificant to target them with much optimism. Towards the end of October we do expect that wahoo should become more active and it will be time soon to start searching the Banks for the favored Chihuil batfish.
Good Fishing, Eric
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