Weather is Hot, Hot, Hot!

Endless Season Update 08/13/2008REPORT #1127 "Below the Border" Saltwater Fly-Fishing reports since 1996

East Cape

However, the margaritas were frothy

Some things are predicable about August at East Cape: blazing Baja sun and flat, calm seas which provide perfect conditions for spotting fish on the surface. You might see a tail jutting toward the sky…a tell-tale “V”…as a big fish swims just below the surface or you might see the froth and scales left by a frightened school of baitfish being chased by predators.

This week offered these perfect conditions for finding fish. Unfortunately, the action was scarce. A few billfish were sighted here and there but there was little, if any, concentration. Easy to spot but tough to find, the porpoise were not much help either. The tuna that were caught were barely bite sized.

This seems to be a case of “you should be careful what you wish for!” All spring and summer the BIG dorado have been caught one or two at a time, and many anglers whined about there not being any school fish. Well, the dorado caught lately qualify as ‘schoolies’, but some of them would barely qualify as bite sized for the few smaller blues being caught.

Even the larger roosters seemed to take the week off; inshore most of the roosters caught were under ten pounds with an occasional ‘Bubba class’ sighted but seldom hooked.
However, the margaritas were frothy, the cerveza icy enough to take the edge off of the hot…hot...hot weather.

Tip: When the dorado charge the boat shorten your cast and aim directly at the feeding fish, strip a couple of times and if you don’t get a take, pick up the fly and recast back to the same area.

Water temperature
76-86
Air temperature
76-95
Humidity
83%
Wind:
SSE 10 to 13 knots
Conditions:
Mostly Cloudy
Visibility
5 miles
Sunrise
6:54 a.m. MDT
Sunset
7:53 p.m. MDT

Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico

While it’s too early to declare that the offshore fall season has begun, the action has been great for dorado, tuna, yellowtail and wahoo. The commercial fishermen continue to report marlin sightings, but few have taken the time to focus on them.

Enrique Soto, Puerto San Carlos, reported that yellowtail action at the Entrada has been productive chasing the bird schools. In the esteros, there were a few small snook caught near Devil’s Curve.

Up above Lopez Mateos, the grouper and pargo provided the best action near Boca Santo Domingo.


Water temperature
60 - 76
Air temperature
74 -97
Humidity
93 %
Wind:
WNW 9 to 12 knots
Conditions:
Mostly Clear
Visibility
6 miles
Sunrise
7:00 a.m. MDT
Sunset
8:02 p.m. MDT

Zihuatanejo, Mainland Mexico

The 82º blue water is just a couple of miles off the beach. Fishing has been very good for sailfish, but poor for marlin, tuna, and dorado. Most boats are averaging 2 to 3 sailfish a day each. Early in the week, Martin, on the Nautilus released 4 sails.
The roosterfish action is holding up well, as there have been no hard rains this week, and none in the forecast. Heavy rain creates a lot of runoff out of the silt laden rivers, discoloring the inshore waters. Jack crevalle action has also been good.

Ed Kunze

Water temperature
80 - 84
Air temperature
76-90
Humidity
89%
Wind:
Calm
Conditions:
Partly Cloudy
Visibility
7 miles
Sunrise
7:29 a.m. CDT
Sunset
8:13 p.m. CDT

Cabo San Lucas

BILLFISH: There was very little change in the billfish action this week with the action being pretty evenly spread between the Blue Marlin, Striped Marlin and Sailfish. The Striped Marlin are a bit of a surprise since the water is this warm, but they are nice to see. Most of the Blue Marlin have been smaller fish in the 120 to 200 pound class, but they will still kick the butt of any Striped Marlin. A few nicer fish in the 300+ pound class were caught this week as well. The bite on all the billfish was pretty evenly mixed between lures and live bait. There were plenty of small Bonita just off the beach to fill the tuna tubes with if you were targeting the Blue Marlin and the Caballito worked on the Striped Marlin. Most of the Sailfish were taken with small lures, but the occasional fish fell for strip bait dropped back or smaller live bait.

YELLOWFIN TUNA: We finally had some Tuna show up but they have been quite a distance away. The calm water allowed boats to go out roaming and searching and a few of them did manage to find some decent fish between 32 and 40 miles off the Cape. The area outside the San Jaime had fish ranging in the 150-200 pound class early in the week for boats that had the time to find the Porpoise, but the fish were moving fast. Smaller fish were found a bit closer to home but still at least 30 miles out, and they ranged in size from 35 to 80 pounds. It seemed that the fish were slowly working their way south as the bite continued over several days. By the end of the week the fish had worked themselves out of our range. The larger fish in every instance were taken on live bait, and deep dropped bait caught the larger of those.

DORADO: I have been surprised that the Dorado catch has been as slow as it has been. I guess that we need at least a month of the warm water to really bring them into our area, and it would help if we had floating debris for them to hide under. The fish that have been caught have averaged 12 pounds with an occasional fish to 35 pounds. Most boats have been lucky to get one or two fish; a few have caught three or more. Most of the action on Dorado has been on the Pacific side of the cape.

INSHORE: There was almost no change in the inshore action this week compared to last week. With the calm water this week most of the Pangas were working just off the beach for Sailfish and Striped Marlin as well as Dorado. Those boats working the beach did fair on Roosterfish on the Cortez side.

George & Mary Landrum

Water temperature
67 - 75
Air temperature
78 - 98
Humidity
84%
Wind:
WNW at 8mph
Conditions:
Partly Sunny
Visibility
5 miles
Sunrise
6:56 a.m. MST
Sunset
7:53 p.m. MST