FISHING STILL TRYING TO MAKE A COMEBACK AFTER STORMS

Happy Father’s Day Everyone to you and your families and all dad’s everywhere!

The week started off with all of us watching with a bit of trepidation as Hurricane Carlos was building far to the south of us. Just what we need! But, like many others, Carlos petered out long before it ever touched Baja and went inland leaving us with a great week of nothing but warm blue Baja skies…temperatures in the low 90’s…and water that seems to keep growing prettier the further we get away from the last storm, Blanca, two weeks ago.

Blanca put the hammer on what had been an increasingly good fishing season. So, now that it’s passed, it seems with each passing day and the further we get on the calendar away from Blanca, the better the water gets and hence the better the fishing seems to be as well. Although, Storm Carlos did send some wind and big waves our way!

Overall, a pretty decent week of fishing. It’s been better, but this week was not all that terrible by any stretch! It just could have been even better as things try to right themselves and get on an even keel.

LAS ARENAS/ BAHIA DE LOS MUERTOS

As mentioned above, with each day away from the storm, things get better. Prior to the storm, we had an epic wahoo bite…probably the best I’ve seen here in the 20 years I’ve been working down here. So, anytime something like a weather-related event comes along, I get worried.

Well, the wahoo sure seem to be back. As one of my guys told me, “There were free-swimming wahoo all over the place!” Never seen anything like it. The fish are sticking around for some crazy reason and surely no one is complaining.

The fish are 20-50 pounds and eating bait as well as lures like dark-colored Rapalas. Rapalas, especially purple and dark-colored black/ white or grey combinations have been hot. Bring some down if you can. Especially the Rapala CD-18 or even better, the Rapala X-Rap 15 of Rapala XRap 30. The stores here in town keep selling out even with the price tags of almost 40 dollars for them. Worse is that many anglers are losing their fish so if the lure belonged to a captain…adios…there goes $40 bucks!

If you have time, take the treble hooks off of the lures and replace them with single hooks!

But, the truth is that these are home-run fish. Big or go home! For every fish we put in the panga, 2-4 fish are lost! Or, worse, many times, one of our pangas come in and the anglers have long faces. They got nothing, but tell me they lost 3, 4 or 5 fish! These fish are fast and hard chargers and they have sharp teeth and a hard jawbone so you really have to stick that hook hard when they bite.

For other fish, the other news is that it seems the marlin really woke up…finally! Quite a few marlin getting hooked up. Mostly stripers and blues with stripers going 90-120 pounds and blues up to 300. Every day this week several were hooked up and fortunately, most fish are getting released.

Additionally, rooster fish were back nicely in the counts. Most fish were 15-30 pounds, but there’s a school of 2-10 pounders right in Bahia de Los Muertos and if you just wanted to stay in the bay and catch-and-realease small roosters all day, it’s not out of the question.

Not many dorado showing up which is a surprise! Again, the conditions are the dispositive factor. Late in the week we had big waves and winds that were residual effects of Hurricane Carlos way to the south of us. Although the sun kept blazing and we didn’t get any storm conditions, the storm did send up waves and wind which then affected the fishing negatively.

LA PAZ

Good bit of variety for our Tailhunter anglers fishing with our La Paz fleet. More dorado showing up in the counts although, not alot of big fish just yet. Most fish are schoolie-sized 5-15 pounders with the occasional 20 pound mahi in the box. I expect this is just the opening round and the mahi fishing will get better. Lots of and lots of little fish around and sure, you could put a big dent in your ice chest fishing some of the trout-sized dorado, but what’s the fun in that? Hopefully, bigger and tougher guys will arrive as we move into summer.

For other species, our pangas are still finding some great marks of pargo mulatto and yellow snapper as well as some hefty trophy-cabrilla.

As well, we are also seeing more anxious billfish like sails and marlin and rooster fish in some of the coves up to 50 pounds.