La Paz/Las Arenas April 2nd/Weekly

Big smiles for Ken Gragg who landed this yellowtail fishing the El Bajo Seamount north of La Paz. The yellows are still there, but warming waters may change that as we saw more dorado and even marlin show up in the fish counts this week!



Someone has some fillets to bring home. That's Carl Lange and Gary Bray posing on the sands at Mogote with 8 yellowtail they caught north of La Paz. Sardines and iron still working!



Sometimes everyone is chasing the "trophy" fish that folks forget about all the other great species to catch like this excellent cabrilla (Mexican seabass) that Carl Lange got.



Not bad,young lady!... for first time fishing for Brady Davison getting a hand with his big yellowtail from Capt. Hugo out of Muertos Bay.



Gary Wagner knows he's got hamachi on the grill tonite with some yellowtail! Note the flat waters of Muertos!


YELLOWTAIL MIX IT UP WITH MARLIN AND DORADO…IN MARCH!
I’m not sure how to characterize the week of fishing. It was a good week of fishing. Everyone caught fish. The yellowtail bite has been fantastic, but some folks who wanted yellowtail caught other fish. People who wanted “other species” got yellowtail! So, there was just the “hint” of disappointment here and there!

Look… Everyone caught fish, but there’s so much variety out there right now that some guys wanted one species and caught others and vice versa! I think the waters are warming and the bad news is, this may shut down the fantastic yellowtail bite we’ve had, but the good news is, we’ll be into the surface blue water species like dorado, billfish, tuna and wahoo before long. The other bad side is that when we hit a certain water temp level the algae bloom kicks off. Waters get cloudy. Good for our divers because that’s when we get whalesharks, but sometimes, not the best for fishing, at least for surface species. Then, the waters go up a degree or two and BOOM…just like that the water clear to blue and the fish blow up again! We’ll have to wait and see.

This week, we did get into more of that trophy-grade yellowtail. These are those really nice 30-40 pound moss-back-golden-silver slugger fish that just hammer you when they bite! They were still in the usual areas like El Bajo north of Espirito Santo Island and in various places around Cerralvo Island and Punta Perico. In those same areas, we also got bit by pargo, cabrilla and amberjack with some nice shoreline action along the beaches by sierra, pompano, jack crevalle and roosterfish. No shortage of bonito around either!

The problem was (if you can call it that) is lots of anglers are here to nail the rock species like the yellowtail and pargo and cabrilla. So, what do you do when dorado or billfish bite? Well, that’s exactly what happened this week. It’s still barely out of March and we had several hookups on striped marlin and well as dorado that really surprised the anglers as well as the captains. Again, that just leads me to believe that waters might be warming up faster than normal!

We’ll have to keep an eye out for that as well as reports of sargasso weed already starting to build up in the channel which become haven for the dorado plus reports again of tuna at the north end of Cerralvo Island.

One problem we did have was that so many boats from the East Cape to the south of us by 60 miles were running all the way up our area to fish. That made for alot of traffic a few days. One day, it was reported that as many as 50 boats were on the water (between cruisers, private boats, commercial pangas, sportfishing pangas) ! Sheesh. C’mon.

Our pangas and a lots of cruisers jumping on our fishing spots. Love the guys down there and wave at them all the time on the water, but some of their captains will drop right on our fishing spots even where commercial guys are just trying to eck out a meager living and the big cruisers with their thumping engines will just shut down the bite. Lose-lose for everyone. It’s not everyone…just a few rude captains.

Or, on more than one occasion, I’ve seen the big cruisers just thoughtlessly criss-cross back and forth right in our panga chumlines. It’s just a few idiots, but it doesn’t make for good relations. I did hear of one set of commercial pangeros going at it with one cabron cruiser and started throwing things at them this week. It’s a big ocean. There’s more than one spot to fish. We’re there at 6 a.m. and the cruisers show up at 8 or 9 and will just jump right on our spots. Shuts down the bite for everyone. Bad ju-ju. Bad form. I have seen rude bahavior from panga captains too. Plenty of room for everyone. Just all have to be aware and courteous to each other.

That’s our story!
Jonathan and Jilly

and i thought you fisherfolks were all civilized, unlike us unwashed surfers!

[Edited on 4-5-2011 by woody with a view]

thinking it is the same mold........ just different

[Edited on 4-5-2011 by Sirena]