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Fishing Report for San Jose del Cabo, Baja
Capt. Eric Brictson
February 23, 2003
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Anglers -
February 23, 2003
While much of the United States was now dealing with cold wintertime conditions, this helped boost the flow of tourists to Southern Baja. Local weather was very pleasant, sunny days with highs of 75 to 80 degrees. Water temperatures varied from 69 to 73 degrees, with the warmest area being located off of San Jose del Cabo. Much of this past week the wind played havoc, first blowing from the south, then, switching and coming out of the north and west, by the weekend it settled down and anglers enjoyed calmer seas. The overall fishing action improved as was expected as the full moon passed and even on the windy days anglers did well trolling close to shore. There were adequate supplies of mackerel and sardinas, though on some days the commercial pangueros had to search in order to find the sardinas. Most common catches were dorado, striped marlin, yellowfin tuna, sierra, pargo and cabrilla. The Sea of Cortez seemed to have the best reports and the majority of the fleets were now fishing in this direction.
Wide open striped marlin action was found off of Red Hill and Palmilla, largest concentrations of stripers were found 15 miles out, but they were also showing within several miles of shore. Anglers reported having multiple strikes on trolled lures and the fish would readily take live mackerel, casting to tailing or feeding fish and drifting bait down deep, all of the normal techniques were working and it appears that this bite is really going to take off in the coming days Most of the marlin weighed in the 100 to 130 pound range.
With the cooling water temperatures on the Pacific there were now more dorado being caught out of San Jose, with the majority of them being found closer to shore than normal, attracted by concentrations of baitfish. Numbers were down compared to previous weeks, but still moat boats had one to three of them mixed into their daily catch, live bait was best and sizes were averaging 10 to 20 pounds. There were also good numbers of sierra near the rocky areas around Punta Gorda, hitting on sardinas, rapalas and hoochies. Local gill netting has continued close to shore and it is surprising that there are any sierra left at all, hard to say how long they will hold up to this kind of pressure.
The one hot spot to have a chance at hooking into quality sized yellowfin tuna at this time is on the Inner Gordo Banks. The bite has been on and off, but there are significant numbers of the tuna schooling on the Banks, the trick has been getting them to bite. Chumming and drifting with chunk bait was the most productive method, but over the weekend several of the yellowfin were hooked on live sardinas, including one very impressive 145 pound tuna caught by Vance Vyenielo who was fishing with Gordo Banks Pangas skipper Tony. Vince was a first time Baja visitor from Hawaii, and he will most certainly come back. The tuna taken off of these banks have been weighing anywhere from 40 to over 100 pounds, with the majority of them in the 70 to 100 pound class. Some anglers did have a couple per day, but most people were lucky to land one. Of course these tuna could decide to really bite any day, but in the meantime the fluorocarbon leaders are still proving to be very affective and much patience is necessary.
Good Fishing, Eric
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