Fishing is never an exact science and it’s never what you think it’s going to be. It’s always challenging and right now is no exception. After weeks of rains, Hurricanes passing, Strong currents and dirty water, conditions have improved greatly. Does that mean the fishing is perfect, of course not. But it does mean we have fish. Marlin, Tuna, Sailfish, Rooster fish, we’ve got them. Their jumping and having a great time. Now if you can convince them to take a bait you’ll have the time of your life.

Starting with Corbetena, it’s a hair pulling frustration. Some beginning sentence, but the simple fact we have beautiful High visibility blue water and the fish are jumping. Curious enough the surface baits have disappeared for the most part. Skip Jack Tuna, Google Eyes, etc are thin in supply. Why, who knows. But we have fish, you can see them jumping and they’re difficult to get their attention. Running down riggers from 120 to 150 feet this week didn’t work. Kites don’t work with no wind, but double trouble rigs haven’t been working when there is a manageable breeze. The theory is that there are krill or red crabs on the bottom or mid-level depths. Marlin are between 400 and 550 lbs, Sailfish are of nice size between Corbetena and Punta Mita as well. Yellowfin Tuna is between 40 lbs and just over 100 lbs jumping proudly. A few Dorado are boated in the 25 lb range, but not many. El Banco could be a different deal but again, not much to report when nobody is heading out this way… 

Punta Mita is still Rooster fish land. You’ll find blue water just a few miles off the coast and Sailfish are also running in the area. Naturally with all the rain you’d expect lots of debris in the water and some of that debris is full on trees! Dorado could be around, but with too much crap in the water there isn’t one spot to focus on. Rooster fish are still in the Sayulite area at the 30 to 45 lb range if you’re in the area. Blue and Black marlin could be outside about ten to 16 miles with blue water anything is possible. 

Living Like A Local: Whales in the Bay of Banderas

Inside the bay, not too much to say, too much rain equals too much dirty water. Jack Crevalls are around the river mouths. If you can’t find clean water use a planer to get at least six feet down, hopefully below the the dirty into the clean. 

We’ve seen water temperatures remain at 84 degrees and that’s a good thing. The difficult thing to figure out is why we have jumping fish and they’re not taking baits. We’ve been running downriggers, flying kites, trolling, jigging and praying for a bite. Obviously they’re eating something and it may be Krill Squids and shrimps. Even the Skippies out there at Corbetena are not taking even small baits so there is something going on and hopefully you’ve got a plan or idea when heading out. Also with the crap in the water you should be leaving early as you’ll be going slow. A decent fishing company will make sure you have all your fishing time at the fishing grounds and penalize you for the travel time, slow travel in the crap in the dark. So measure your fishing company accordingly…. 

The bite, who knows, we’re leaving early and that’s not going to change. We’re coming into our best time of the year for fishing in Puerto Vallarta and this will imporove. We always have issues to address and fishing is not guaranteed. It’s a bit of a bump right now but things only last like this a few days and soon we’ll be writing about arm burning action with machine like repeatability.