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Fishing Report for San Jose del Cabo, Baja
Capt. Eric Brictson
August 9, 2003
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Anglers -
August 10, 2003
The summer pattern has continued on generally the same path, sunny weather in the 90s, with less than typical crowds of tourists visiting the Los Cabos area. The tropical storm season has been very minimal so far, there are still about seven peak weeks to go when the activity can develop rapidly and disasters can strike, but for the time being we will all cross our fingers that this year the storms stay off to the south and leave us alone. At this time the ocean swells have been minimal and the unusual winds that have plagued the area the past few weeks have resided and this should help stabilize conditions. Inshore the water has been greenish, though offshore the water is reported to be clean and blue, water temperatures are averaging in the upper 70s to low 80s. Bait supplies have been somewhat limited, caballito and mackerel out of the Cabo Marina, with scattered mullet and very few sardinas being netted off of La Playita beach. Charter fleets have mainly been working areas from Chileno to the Gordo Banks, with more consistent action being found further offshore. Overall catches included blue marlin, striped marlin, sailfish, dorado, yellowfin tuna, skipjack and wahoo. Though with the exception of the yellowfin tuna, none of these species were very abundant and the tuna bite was hit or miss.
Yellowfin tuna were found 15 to 25 miles offshore, most of the schools consisted of fish ranging to 20 pounds and were associated with porpoise. Once located these fish would readily strike on a variety of feathers and cedar plugs. Due to the distance this was mainly action that cruisers were able to enjoy. There were other reports of tuna to over one hundred pounds found in the same areas and live mackerel proved to be best bet, though these baitfish were not always available. Dorado were making an appearance in the fish counts every day, but there numbers were scattered, most charters averaged maybe one of them in their all around catch, but other anglers were lucky and were able to land as many as 4, 5 or 6 of them, sizes ranged to over 40 pounds, average fish was
10 to 20 pounds. Wahoo were not abundant enough to actually target them, but several were being accounted for each day by the combined fleet, they averaged 30 to 50 pounds and hit on trolled lures further offshore in no particular place, where the more common species were tuna and marlin.
Striped marlin continued to dominate the billfish action, throughout the area, best technique has been to cast live baits to tailing fish, more blue marlin are now starting to appear, in the past week fish of 400, 500 to 650 pounds were reported out of Cabo San Lucas, off of the Gordo Banks we have only seen smaller blue marlin to 180 pounds, an occasional sailfish and striped marlin that were as a rule smaller than 100 pounds. There was a lot of skipjack activity now being reported in the Gordo Banks region, so with the weather now settling down and the food supply abundant, there should be increased numbers of large gamefish migrating into local waters.
Along the shoreline anglers continued to find good action for roosterfish, trolling with live mullet was most productive, sizes ranging to 50 pounds, the majority of the fish were in the 20 to 30 pound class, most people that did target these fish accounted for a couple of them. Mixed in were some jack crevalle, pargo and sierra. Not much to report from surf anglers this past week, except for one fortunate local who landed a 40 pound snook at 11:00 p.m. while fishing with a slab of fresh mullet, the same gentlemen on another night reported catching a 15 pound tripletail from this same area in front of the San Jose Estuary.
On August 7 there was an incident where a injured and sick porpoise washed up onto the beach near the Estuary, some ambitious locals teamed up to carry the injured mammal up into the Estuary, where they released it and it tried its best to swim in the fresh water until more people arrived, include the fire department, paramedics and about every other official in town, they decided to haul it further offshore in a panga and release it, they reported that it appeared to be swimming better and swam off, but apparently the injuries were just too severe and the porpoise was found dead on the same beach the next day. It was a shame that there is no special facility locally where a sea mammal could be properly cared for.
Good Fishing, Eric
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