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Fishing Report for San Jose del Cabo, Baja
Capt. Eric Brictson
October 11, 2003
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Anglers -
October 11, 2003
It was good news that the two latest hurricanes, Nora and Olaf, steered clear of the Los Cabos area and only brought some tropical cloud cover and choppy sees for a couple of days before dissipating over mainland Mexico. The second week of October has seen the weather pattern change rapidly from the stifling hot and humid days of summer to the typical cooler fall pattern, with offshore breezes prevalent in the mornings and the evenings actually feeling a tad chilly for the first time since late spring. After enduring one of the worst tropical storm seasons on record the area is finally starting to return to normal, though in certain areas there is still much clean up to be done. The fishing village of La Playita was hit particular hard by the Hurricane Marty and the local government still has not acknowledged any willingness to loan a helping hand and send in some much needed heavy machinery, these residents rely primarily on fishing as their source of income and until the beach is cleaned up their fishing operations are proving to be very difficult.
Crowds of tourists are less than they normally would be for this time of year, but with the weather now seeming to stabilize and with the big buck marlin and tuna tournaments just around the corner, we do foresee a boom in the numbers of visitors in the coming weeks. The past week anglers were catching a variety of gamefish, most common fish were yellowfin tuna, but there were also marlin, sailfish, dorado, pargo and wahoo accounted for. Overall success rates were down compared to normal Cabo fish counts, this most likely was due to the off colored stirred up water conditions and a lack of baitfish, and the fact that we are now in the midst of another full moon phase. Out of San Jose the most productive area was the Gordo Banks, anglers were using sardinas, which are just starting to become more prevalent along the local beaches and chunk bait from the plentiful skipjack to entice strikes from tuna averaging 25 to 50 pounds, most boats were accounting for one to four yellowfin per day. There are definitely some larger gorilla tuna in this same area, as was proved by a couple of anglers aboard a panga based out of Palmilla on Saturday, while using chunk bait the lucky anglers hooked into a brute tuna that fought for over two hours before being brought to gaff and was estimated to weigh from 220 to 250 pounds. Other yellowfin were found further out from the banks mixed in with schooling porpoise, but these fish were often not eager to strike lures and the majority of the fish were of the football sized variety. Some trophy-sized pargo up to fifty pounds were also taken on various whole and cut baits from these same banks, but many of the hook-ups resulted in cut offs due to the close proximity of the rocky bottom structure.
Earlier in the week a few pangas ventured north to the Iman Bank area and had impressive catches of up to three wahoo per morning, they were striking on various high speed lures and weights ranged up to 40 pounds, though later in the week as the moon neared full and the water became cloudy this bite fade out and only a handful of smaller sized dorado were found in the same spot. After anglers enjoyed such a bonanza on dorado fishing after the storms had littered the seas with floating debris, in recent days it has been tough finding any action on dorado at all.
Marlin action was not up to par, though on the Pacific they did report some fair action for striped marlin, there are not many larger blues and blacks around and it makes you wonder how events will play out for the upcoming tournaments. There is now an abundant supply of skipjack schooling around the Gordo Banks and this might just be a good bet for a lucky team to hook into that million dollar jackpot marlin.
Good Fishing, Eric
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