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Fishing Report for San Jose del Cabo, Baja
Capt. Eric Brictson
September 18, 2005
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
September 18, 2005
Anglers –
We are reaching the later part of the tropical storm season and once again we had a week of clear and calm weather, though the humidity was creating a combined heat index that was reaching the red zone, all things considered the light crowds of visitors now in Los Cabos were enjoying themselves in paradise. Anglers fishing from the panga fleets out of the San Jose del Cabo area continued to have outstanding action at the Iman Bank. The Iman has been the most productive local area lately, as can be noticed by the crowds of pangas, as well as cruisers, including scores of which are making the long run south from the East Cape region. Despite all of the boats there was no problem filling up the fish box, plenty of fish to go around.
There were extreme tides this past week and high surf conditions throughout most of the week, but it was not so large that panga fleets had to shut down operations any days. Schools of sardinas off of La Playita were in good supply and they were the favored bait for the schooling yellowfin. Water temperatures were at the summer high, averaged from 85 to 89 degrees throughout the lower Sea of Cortez to the southern tip of the peninsula.
Drift fishing with live or dead bait was the popular method to success and anglers were pretty much catching as many tuna as they wished, sizes dropped from previous weeks, as the average sized fish is now in the 14 to 18 pound class, but everyday there were still fair numbers of larger tuna up to 60 pounds mixed in the same schools. The cruisers that were making the long range trip to Iman from the East Cape had limited access to live sardinas and were relying more on fresh cut squid for bait and they were catching respectable numbers of fish, though not equal to charters having sardinas. They reported that the Humboldt squid were once again invading the area
near Los Frailes. They were significantly more numbers of dorado were caught this past week, the same area of Iman was producing an average of one or two per charter boat, sizes were not huge, but fish to over 20 pounds were weighed in. With the warm water has come a variety of other species as well, rainbow runners were schooling on the banks and readily striking on bait, weighing 4 to 12 pounds, they were scrappy fighters and excellent eating. Sailfish were hooked on bait and lures and proved to be great sport on lighter tackle, most of them weighed in the 60 to 90 pound range.
The wahoo became more active this past week, though not all that many were actually landed, there definitely was more talk about these speedsters either cutting off lines or simply be seen free swimming below the boats. A handful of wahoo to 40 pounds were landed on trolled lures, and others were hooked on yo-yos or various live baits. These fish seemed to be congregated around the Iman Bank, most certainly becoming a bit spooky with all of the boat traffic that has been there recently.
Grouper, amberjack and dogtooth snapper rounded out the exotic species list, as anglers soaking (drifting down deeper) larger baits such as bolito and various jacks encountered some monstrous hook-ups on fish weighing upwards of 75 pounds. Anglers also caught more than enough big skipjacks to additionally wear themselves out.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita sent out 55 charters for the week and anglers accounted for a fish count of: 2 striped marlin, 7 sailfish, 8 wahoo, 82 dorado, 550 yellowfin tuna, 220 bonito, 26 dogtooth snapper, 14 grouper, 12 amberjack and 115 rainbow runners.
Good fishing, Eric
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