Tropical Conditions Brings Scattered Action
Capt. Eric Brictson
July 19, 2009
San Jose del Cabo - Saltwater Fishing Report
July 19, 2009
Anglers –
With the heat of summer now upon us crowds of tourists will become progressively lighter and the weather seems to turning more tropical with each passing day. There has been more than enough blistering sunshine, but at the same time there has been quite a bit of cloud cover, with some threatening rain squalls and humidity that is almost off the scale. This past week saw two more Tropical Storms develop, first Carlos, which headed straight off on a westerly path towards Hawaii and now Dolores appears to following a similar, but closer track, away from land, though we are noticing increased swell activity and breezes from the south. Ocean water temperatures have ranged from 80 to 86 degrees, warmest areas towards Los Frailes. Strong currents have created fluctuating clarity in different regions from day to day.
Overall the fishing action has not been up to summer standards for the Los Cabos area, though there have been a variety of species being found, just the bite has not been consistent and numbers of fish caught have been limited. The bait situation is much the same, smaller sized sardinas and mullet are being netted inshore and on the offshore fishing rounds there are bolito and smaller sized black skipjack being caught with relative ease. The East Cape fleets have reported much better action recently, good numbers of dorado, yellowfin tuna and even some wahoo, we expect this concentration of fish will gradually swift in a southern direction as is the normal seasonal pattern.
Local fleets have been concentrating most of their efforts from Santa Maria to the Gordo Banks, from along the beach stretches for roosterfish and jack crevalle to as far as 25 miles offshore, where anglers have encountered groups of fast moving porpoise holding schools of yellowfin tuna underneath them. Striped marlin are still hanging around but in many cases are being seen but not wanting to bite, showing signs of summertime lockjaw. A few more sailfish and blue marlin hook ups have been reported and surely as we get deeper into summer we will hear more about these species.
Local panga fleets have found dorado and tuna to both be very scarce, with a only a handful of each of these species being accounted for. Anglers reported the most productive action off of shallow rock structure for species such as amberjack and dogtooth snapper, some of these fish weighing up to 50 pounds, striking at times on the surface or mid depth, most often on sardinas, mullet, skipjack or bolito. Triggerfish, yellow snapper, huachinango, hammerhead shark and bonito rounded out the fish count.
Roosterfish were still being found along the shoreline, more often than not they were smaller juvenile fish that had a hard time swallowing the trolled mullet, but then other anglers who were at the right spot did report hooking and landing roosterfish up to fifty pounds.
Surf fishing action did produce a mix of fish, but not as productive as the previous week, no other monster snook were reported that we heard about. Pargo are now starting to bite during the first couple hours of dark and we did even hear about one keeper sized halibut being landed near the north jetty of Puerto Los Cabos.
The combined panga fleets launching from the La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos area reported sending out approximately 57 charters for the past week and anglers reported a fish count of: 2 striped marlin, 3 sailfish, 15 dorado, 11 yellowfin tuna, 24 bonito, 29 amberjack, 18 dogtooth snapper, 40 yellow snapper, 22 huachinango, 7 pompano, 8 sierra, 24 jack crevalle, 5 rainbow runner, 48 triggerfish, 1 wahoo, 8 hammerhead shark and 56 roosterfish.
Good Fishing, Eric
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