Blame Game

Endless Season Update August 18, 2011
REPORT #1262 "Below the Border"
Saltwater Fly-Fishing reports since 1996

Mid August and the fish seemed to have taken a powder. Still some fish around but they aren't exactly jumping in the boats. Three out of four reports this week drug the "full moon" explanation off the shelf to explain the poor fishing. The moon is like Baja if anything goes wrong it gets the blame. Have you ever read that fishing was wide open…must have been the full moon?

How slow was it, Mark Rayor of Jen Wren Sportfishing, spent more time reporting on birds than fish? There were a few highlight fo the lucky ones.

Buenavista Beach Resort boats Liliana and Dottie B11 managed to capture the top prizes in dorado and tuna categories. Last weekend in the La Ribera tournament that coincided the La Ribera Days festival that takes place every August.

 John Ireland, Rancho Leonero reported the inshore produced more quality sized  roosters again this week along with some large amberjack.  Lots of pompano are still around.  A couple of nice pargo in the 20 to 30 # range taken this week.

Current East Cape Weather  http://tiny.cc/EastCapeWeather303

Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico

Warm water currents resulted in the best early showing of marlin in two years from Tasco to the upper end of the ridge. Most of the shark buoys holding dorado and there is a good showing of yellowfin tuna feeding on baitballs. Watch for the bird schools.

In the esteros there have been a smattering of nice sized corvina and grouper scattered above Lopez Mateos…Bob Hoyt

Current Magdalena Bay Weather  http://tiny.cc/MagBayWeather150

Zihuatanejo, Mainland Mexico

No report….Ed Kunze  

Current Zihuatanejo Weather  http://tiny.cc/zihuatanejo582

Cabo San Lucas

The marlin fishing was similar to fishing for every else this week, not a lot of fish but the ones that were caught were quality fish.  With the warm water has come the blue marlin, and while not every boat managed to hook into one, there were a few boats that managed a release on two per day.  Most of the fish were under 300 pounds. From just off the beach to beyond the 1,000 fathom line, they were scattered everywhere. We also saw quite a few sailfish this week, most of them over 100 pounds.  Not appearing in large packs, still they were getting into the lure in small groups of two or three fish at a time and causing quite a commotion on the deck as the attacked everything in the water. The striped marlin bite has died off quite a bit.  There are still a few fish caught every day, most of them from just off the beach to the north on the Pacific side.

Tuna slowed still more, the bite has fallen off quite a bit.  Where we were getting at least a couple of fish every trip, now it is a fish or two every few trips.  On a good note, these fish have been real nice ones!  As I said earlier, quality fish, not quantity of fish.  Finding porpoise was still the key, and being the first to them was something that you had to have happen.  Second boat or later may as well have just not moved.  With fish to #200, a few boats were lucky enough to be the first ones on the porpoise and sometimes ended up with multiple hook-ups, but were thankful to get one of  them into the boat.  Boats that were able to fly a kite increased their chances of hooking up by at least 50%, and if you did not have a kite, having flouro-carbon leader sure was better than normal mono-filament leader for these big tuna.

While there are still plenty of dorado out there, the number caught is down.  Again, most of the fish were close to the beach and averaged just 8-10 pounds.  A few larger fish were caught and again slow trolling live bait seemed to produce better quality fish than just trolling lures.  Almost all the action occurred on the Pacific side of the Cape.

Once again there was a scattering of wahoo in the smaller size range caught this week, mostly by boats working off the beach for the small dorado.  I did not hear of any large ones being caught and the smaller fish were in the 20-25 pound class.  With the full moon just happening, the bite might turn on for a couple of days.

 Inshore fishing was slow, as was everything else this week.  We had a few clients on Pangas who did fair on the dorado, were able to catch plenty of skip-jack and bonito and had some action on hammerhead sharks as well.  Roosterfish were not real active and while a few decent snapper and grouper were caught, they were not there in the numbers to make it worth targeting them..…George and Mary Landrum

Current Cabo Weather  http://tiny.cc/cabo191