REPORT #1093 "Below the Border" Saltwater Fly-Fishing reports since 1996
NOTE: Beginning this week, we will be sending out our reports each Wednesday instead of Saturday. In addition, we are adding two areas to our reports: George and Mary Landrum will be providing Baja on the Fly with Cabo San Lucas updates and Shari Bondy and Juan Marron will be providing updates from Bahia Asuncion. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! ...GARY AND YVONNE GRAHAM.
East Cape
East Cape weather has definitely shifted to our typical winter pattern with many windy days. However, early in the morning and sometimes all the way to mid-morning, you may find good fishing. You can usually see the wind line coming and hightail it home before it reaches you.
There are still ‘schoolie’ sized yellowfin tuna offshore along with some dorado; along the shore the sierra are still around, dashing and slashing.
We’ve had some reports of a pargo snap in the rocks at Punta Perico.
Yellowfin Tuna Tip: Often as the fleet of boats grows, the fish will go deeper in the water column. Use a shooting head cast the fly out as far as possible and let the fly sink. Then try 3 or 4 hard pulls, shake the line out again letting the fly sink again. We’ve had great success with this method using this fly: http://www.bajafly.com/bajawasabi.htm
Water temperature 74-74
Air temperature 62-81
Humidity 73 %
Wind: NNW 13 to 18 knots
Conditions: Partly Sunny
Visibility 13 miles
Sunrise 6:56 a.m. MST
Sunset 5:36 p.m. MST
Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico
It’s kind of like throwing a party and nobody showing up with no one fishing this week at Mag Bay.
The Finger Bank below Punta Tosca is going off again and the few boats taking advantage of the bite are coming up from Cabo. One boat out of Cabo boasted 30+ fish two days ago.
In the Esteros, the locals reported good action for grouper, snook and corvina.
Water temperature 67 - 70
Air temperature 61 -79
Humidity 73%
Wind: NW 14 to 19 knots
Conditions: Cloudy
Visibility 6 miles
Sunrise 7:01 a.m. MST
Sunset 5:41 p.m. MST
Zihuatanejo, Mainland Mexico
The excellent sailfish and dorado action is still holding up this week, with the daily counts actually being higher than the last two week's averages. We are definitely going to have a great Christmas.
Cali and I fish with fly fishing client David McCarty of Philadelphia, PA down at Puerto Vicente Guerrero (about an hour and a half below Zihuatanejo). By noon, we had raised 12 sailfish, teased 8 to the boat, and hooked 4.
We also raised an estimated 16 dorado. We had 8 come to the boat, and hooked 4. The dorado were averaging about 15 pounds for the females, and between 25 and 45 pounds for the bulls.
Plus, something I had never seen before; the dorado were actually coming in on the same teasers as the sailfish, and beating the sails to the fly. Several times Cali had a dorado on one teaser, while I was bringing in a sail on the other. At one point David asked me if he should take the sailfish or the dorado. I had no more than yelled out "the one which gets there first", and a large bull sliced across the stern and slammed into the fly. The voracious hit, from only about 10 feet away, plus a hard left hand strip hook set, and the fly line parted. But, it sure was exciting!
Ed Kunze
Water temperature 80 - 84
Air temperature 72-96
Humidity 61%
Wind: SW at 10mph
Conditions: Sunny
Visibility 15 miles
Sunrise 7:11 a.m. CST
Sunset 6:15 p.m. CST
Cabo San Lucas
BILLFISH: The Striped Marlin bite has remained wide open on the Finger Bank on the Pacific side, but it is such a long run for the fleet boats that very few have been going. The average there has been in the double-digit area in numbers of releases. The bite that had been happening on the Golden Gate dropped off to practically a standstill as the bait moved off the bank and in toward shore. The fish moved with them and now the close to home bite is within three miles of the beach on the Pacific side and extending down to just outside the lighthouse. Slow trolled or drifted live baits have been the best producer but a lot of luck is being had by boats pulling lures as well, dropping back live bait to fish that appear in the spread. One of the problems we see occasionally is lots of fish on the surface that don’t want to eat, and one way to get them excited is to troll lures at a faster speed. A few boats had luck doing that during the middle of the week, finding that lures pulled at ten and eleven knots got those fish to bite.
YELLOWFIN TUNA A scattering of football fish showed up again just to the north of the Gorda Banks on the Cortez side of the cape but there were also scattered fish on the Pacific, just no big numbers or consistently large sizes yet. The football Yellowfin were 10-15 pounds with an occasional 20-pound fish and Sardinas were the way to go. Chumming heavily with both live and dead Sardinas would bring the fish up, then a live one pinned on a small #2 silver hook on 20-pound floura-carbon leader would get bit quickly, heavier leader did not produce as well.
DORADO: There were a few scattered fish, but the numbers were smaller than last week. As the water cools these will become an exception in the catch rather than a targeted fish. Most of the ones that were found were on the Sea of Cortez up around the Punta Gorda area, but a few fish shoed up in the warm water on the Pacific as well. The best lures were smaller ones in bright colors, bright feathers worked for many boats. Small Dorado were found mixed with the football Tuna as well and readily ate Sardinas presented for Tuna.
WAHOO: I saw no Wahoo flags this week that were for Wahoo, I did see quite a few that were flown for Sierra.
INSHORE: Sierra were the fish of the week for the inshore fishermen and they were consistently on the feed off of the Solmar-Finesterra beach early in the morning. They seemed to move up to the north later in the day. Yellowtail continued to produce scattered action off of the rocky points on the Cortez side with some decent fish being taken off of Gray Rock and the drop at Chileno.
Bahia Asuncion
After a lousy couple weeks of nasty weather, (torrential downpours that washed out roads, gale force SE winds, enormous swells and cool cloudy days), FINALLY we got a nice sunny day.
It coincided with the big holiday, Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe, which was a treat for the villagers as they paraded the Virgin about town and even for a spin in a panga.
Juan woke up and looked out our window and saw lots of indicator birds so he flew out to the panga and set off with his workmate to Pta.Loma, between Asuncion & San Roque. There were hundreds of dolphins feeding heavily on sardines and within an hour they had 3 nice big yellowtail and a bunch of bonito and they were home for breakfast soon after.
Nice to know the storm didn't chase the fish away! The water is still about 70 degrees and visibility is good. The yellows hit on Juan’s favorite lure...the 7" EXRAP, a white one with a red head and a plastic nose. The fish were down about 15-20'. Local fishermen report an abundance of yellowtail, bonito and lots of feed.
The folks of Bahia Asuncion wish you all a very Feliz Navidad!
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