 |
Fishing Report for San Jose del Cabo, Baja
Capt. Eric Brictson
August 11, 2002
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Anglers -
August 11, 2002
This past week there were no signs of any tropical storm activity developing to the south, the days were very warm and humid, early in the week there were local thunderstorms over the mountains to the north of San Jose del Cabo, from Miraflores to La Paz. The hills were lush green, though the low coastal lands still were desert dry. Definitely no more problems with cold water, the temperature is now averaging 83 to 85 degrees. The clarity has improved and clear blue water was found as close as just a few miles from shore. The fishing reports have been great the past week, with dorado, sailfish, striped and blue marlin and yellowfin tuna making up the majority of the catch. Fleets have been concentrated from the 95 spot near Cabo, to north of Desteladera. Live bait became somewhat scarce, compared to how steady the supplies have been all summer, but there were still mullet, sardinas and caballito available, depending on where your charter happen to launch from.
The numbers of striped marlin are diminishing recently, as most of them are now heading towards Southern Californian waters. There have been increased counts of blue marlin and sailfish moving into the warm local waters, sails up to 100 pounds were being hooked closer to shore, from Red Hill to Cabo San Lucas, hitting both trolled lures and live baits. Blue marlin were hooked in this same area, though they were found further from shore and were hitting the larger trolled lures. Two black marlin hook ups were reported by the La Playita panga fleet from the area of San Luis, while trolling with bolito, both fish were lost after extended battles due to leaders being too light and rigged for targeting dorado. One black marlin was estimated to weigh close to 600 pounds and was fought for 4 hours before the 125 lb. mono leader gave way. With more bolito now schooling on the fishing grounds this should bring in even more hungry gamefish in the coming weeks, another good sign is that football sized yellowfin tuna are also moving inshore, hitting on both live sardinas and medium sized feathers and cedar plugs.
The pangas launching from Playita were doing very well for dorado, with the bite happening in all directions, but the best action was found right around the perimeters of the schools of bolito, which also proved to be the most affective baitfish for hooking into the larger bulls. Pangas averaged from 3 to 8 dorado each morning, with most of the fish weighing from 20 to 40 pounds and a few bulls tipped the scales to 50 pounds or more. Over the weekend some yellowfin tuna and sailfish were mixed in the fish counts, earlier in the week the bite had been pretty much exclusively for dorado, though most anglers were not complaining, it is always nice when you can catch a variety of species. There were days when a handful of wahoo were accounted for, the areas of Chileno, Santa Maria and Iman produced jig strikes, though most of these were incidental while targeting other fish, and actual numbers of wahoo landed were few. The ones taken weighed in the 50 pound range.
Not much bottom fishing going on now, but for the few that did target the rock plies with yo-yo's there was fair action found for amberjack and pargo. The lack of baitfish off of the beaches has slowed down the surf fishing, with only several snook being talked about this past week. The Estuary has sealed at the mouth once again, but when the flow does open back up to the ocean that should help put the snook back on the prowl. There has recently been local commercial panga activity targeting dorado with surface nets, hopefully this is stopped soon, of course they are also trapping turtles and anything else that swims into them.
Good Fishing, Eric
More Fishing Reports:
|
|
|
|
