Andres is History…Bite Resumes

Endless Season Update 06/24/2009
REPORT #1172 "Below the Border" Saltwater Fly-Fishing reports since 1996

East Cape

Fishing was great until Andres stirred things up down by Zihuatanejo this past week, resulting in unseasonal north winds bringing rough conditions and plenty of white caps to the area. Whether the fish quit biting or everyone just elected to stay in is debatable.

When Andres faded into obscurity and the north wind went with it. Both the billfish and dorado picked up where they had left off before the storm. It has taken a few days for the inshore water to clean up, but there are still lots of jacks and enough roosters to keep everyone pumped up.

Current East Cape Weather

Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico

With the lighter winds and calmer seas this week, the few boats heading out found plenty of dorado and small tuna ten miles outside the Boca. The entrada produced good catches of small yellows. Deeper down in the water column, there were some smaller leopard grouper.

Estero action above Lopez Mateos seemed to be the most productive with grouper and spotted bay bass dominating the catch.

Current Magdalena Bay Weather

Zihuatanejo, Mainland Mexico

Tropical storm Andres hurt the fishing this week. We had two days of port closure, and nobody went out fishing.

The aftermath, caused from high winds and a high tide caused by the storm surge, along with the rain, made it very difficult to fish for the roosters, and the blue water bite slowed way down also.

Baja On The Fly client, Kurt Ransohoff of Santa Barbara and Tom Lorish of Portland fly fished with fly fishing guide Lance Peterson down at Puerto Vicente Guerrero on Wednesday and only raised one rooster. However, the day was salvaged by moving off the beach about a mile and fishing the weed lines caused by the storm runoff out of the rivers. They took 13 nice dorado. Lance was casting a hookless surface popper teaser and the dorado were readily eating the fly.

Tomorrow, they have relocated to Zihuatanejo and will be fishing with Arturo on the panga, Janeth. I will be guiding fly fishing client Mark Hennig of Denmark tomorrow down at Vicente Guerrero. We are all hoping the 24 hours will give the ocean enough time to calm down and bring back the roosterfish bite.

Ed Kunze

Current Zihuatanejo Weather

Cabo San Lucas

Boats that targeted striped marlin this week were having very mixed results. One day the fish would bite and the next they all had their mouths closed…no matter what you put in front of them. There were a few blue marlin caught this week as well as a couple of black marlin reported, and the size of the fish was decent, an average of 250 pounds. They were all found on the Sea of Cortez, and they struck on lures.

For most of the week the tuna action continued to be slow with a few fish being found among dolphin; most of the fish were footballs, between 5 and 12 pounds. There were a few very nice fish between 100 and 150 pounds brought in, caught among the big black porpoise in the Sea of Cortez.

Dorado were the fish of the week for offshore anglers as they were almost everywhere on the Cortez side of the Cape. Along with numbers which averaged between three to six fish per boat came a very nice average size at between 15 to 20 pounds. A few small fish in the 10-pound class balanced out the few caught that were 50+ pounds, and there were quite a few in the 30 to 40 pound category.

Roosterfish dominated the inshore action. Although they were not everywhere, when you did find them they were there in good numbers. The high swells put them off their feed for a while, but they did bite well once they got going.

George & Mary Landrum

Current Cabo Weather