La Paz/Las Arenas April 16th Report

Every reason to strike a pose when you nail a fish like this big yellowtail taken by Bob Robbins from Arizona fishing north of town at the El Bajo Seamount where yellowtail put on a world-class show this past week and were the highlight of a week that had its ups and downs.


John Bolton from San Luis Obispo CA has fished with us many times, but it was a first time for his amigo, Doug Fulp from Texas. The two of them got into that epic yellowtail bite north of town where they estimated they caught and released or lost close to 20 fish in just several hours!


There's a reason they call the La Paz area, the "Roosterfish capital of the world." This fish isnt quite as large as the world-record- roosterfish caught in La Paz at 114 pounds, but this is an incredible beast of a fish caught by our own Jilly Roldan of Tailhunter. (See the video clip below). Jill hooked the fish just south of Bahia de Los Muertos on a slow trolled live sardine and fought it for about 20 minutes in a spectacular battle on 40 pound test with the fish estimated at 30-35 kilos (70 pounds). Jill had an incredible day on the water getting her first pargo liso (mullet snapper); pargo pero (dog-tooth snapper) and this world-class roosterfish which is her personal best largest fish! Even better, she worked extensively to revive the fish and get it swimming away strongly! Not 5 minutes after releasing this fish, she hooked another that may have been even larger and it went "dorado" on her leaping completely out of the air which is unusual for roosters. The tough fish then went into the rocks (like a pargo) where Jill battled back and forth until the big rooster sawed finally sawed her off. Capt. Gerardo lends a hand.


Its a good day ANYTIME you get one of these great fish outta the rocks! Gary Palese says it almost pulled him out've the boat twice and his fishing partner had to hold onto his shirt tails as he struggled to keep the fish out of the rocks fishing just several yards from the Perico cliffs. This dog tooth snapper (pargo perro) makes great eating!


Sometimes they even let me fish! I hooked 4 pargo this day just outside of Bahia de Los Muertos with fish crashing all around, but only managed to get this one pargo liso (mullet snapper) to the boat. Fish are tough and can humble anyone very quickly!


A FRESH ONE on the gaff! Gary Palese holds up on of the slugger yellowtail that exploded north of La Paz this week. The trick was having caballito or mackerel for bait although sardines and iron worked well also.



Dr. Desmond Sjauwfoekloy from Los Angeles makes last minute trips to us when he can get away from his busy schedule. Whenever he shows up it just seems the bite goes off for him and he nailed 8 big yellowtail this week like this one. I don't know if the fishing gets good because he shows up or he just shows up when the fishing is good, but he always does well!


There's always something special about a first fish no matter the size. It's all about the smiles. Abby Oclassen from Colorado holds onto her very first fish...a sierra...caught fishing out of Bahia de Los Muertos.



CRAZY YELLOWTAIL FISHING NORTH OF LA PAZ BUT COULD THIS BE THE GRAND FINALE?

There’s good news and bad news. First, for our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet, things just went flat this past week. And I’m not talking about the water smoothing out. It was still a bit bumpy out there especially at the beginning of the week making it tough to get to Cerralvo Island and sometimes difficult to get sardines for bait. Waters also got warmer which meant the algae bloom went off making the waters green and dirty. None of this helped the bite except for pargo. And you’d hook 10 and “maybe” get 1 to the boat. That didn’t make for very good numbers of fillets to take home.

Now for the good news! I’m glad we have two fleets…one in Las Arenas and one in La Paz! We were able to switch many of our anglers to our La Paz pangas (where the fishing normally isn’t rolling full turbo just yet), but nonetheless was better than Las Arenas mainly because this past week we hammered some of the BEST yellowtail fishing in recent memories. It wasn’t just the numbers of yellowtail, but also the size of the fish and the ferocity of their bite that made this so exciting.

I don’t use the word “ferocity” very often but heading north to the El Bajo Seamount north of La Paz, the fish were FOAMING…yup…crashing the surface in displays we don’t often see. According to some of our anglers, they were in such numbers at times that they were fighting to get any bait thrown in the water. Double and triple hook-ups were the norm and the “smaller” fish were 25 pound class the the “larger” fish were in the 50-pound class (this is my captains talking…not the anglers! To fishermen EVERY fish is 50 pounds!). Getting the big baits early in the morning like the caballito and mackeral were the key and then chumming with sardines to get the yellowtail crashing and on the chew. Anglers just had to be patient at times as it’s not easy to get the larger boats as they have to jig the up in the bay before going out to the fishing grounds. You can’t just drive up to the bait man and order up a scoop or two!

Anyway, these fish were busting off 60 and 80 pound test at times, but normally 50 pound test with flurocarbon leaders worked well. Here’s the rub…I’m not sure how much time we have on these things! The way the Terrafin satellite images are showing the waters are warming up fast. To the south at Las Arenas it’s already happened. Once the waters get warmer, the yellowtail will shut down and I’m not sure what we’ll have after that. Maybe great. May it will hit a lull for a week or so until the waters keep rising and all the muck cleans up and the fish get acclimated and hungry again in which case it will be more blue water species rather than the yellowtail. But, that’s just my guess. Who knows?

For Las Arenas, as mentioned, the waters already have gone up a few notches. Fishing isn’t bad. It’s the ‘catching” that’s bad. When the pargo are rolling in the shallows stopping them is sometimes just ridiculous. I fished 3 days this week myself and broke off 8 fish and only got one 15 pounder to the boat. But there are 20 and 30 pound fish moving in the school and all of them are horses! But, there’s still sierra, some very good cabrilla and we also got some big roosters biting just south of Muertos Bay up to 70 pounds close to the cliffs. Check out the photos and attached video!

VIDEO CLIP OF THE WEEK
Click this link to our youtube video clip of some of this week’s fishing action including some pargo and the big roosterfish!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4S31HJffFU


That's our story!
Jonathan and Jilly Roldan
La Paz, BCS

[Edited on 4-18-2011 by Sirena]

[Edited on 4-18-2011 by Sirena]

[Edited on 4-18-2011 by Sirena]

[Edited on 4-18-2011 by Sirena]

Very nice rooster Jilly! A toad of a fish. Glad you and Jonathan made it back from the show tour in one piece! Real scary in the states

See you SOOOOOOOOON!