A Defining Week

Seldom does one week define the season but after a seemly long cold winter our East Cape fishing season has begun to blossom.

Conditions are great! No wind, water temperatures are rising every day, and there are plenty of sardina around, as well as larger bait. Wahoo (63 pounds and my dad Chuy landed it! They also released two sails that day.), big dorado (40 to 50 pounds), sailfish, striped marlin, red snapper, jack crevalle, some sierra, amberjacks and even a blue marlin was caught in the area this week.


After my friend Jon Wemple, Montana blanked for two days in a row on a cruiser, I invited him to fish with me on one of our pangas, the Mosca, with Victor Jr.

Victor Jr. tried several of his favorites spots before finding one that was very productive… yielding one good-sized yellowtail out of three hooked. Two cabrilla and one red snapper were also landed at the same spot. Since Jon was eager to catch a striped marlin we decided to troll farther offshore. We found at least twenty of them ten miles off of La Ribera but no biters.

Finally around noon we decided to return to the hotel for a late lunch. Reeling in his line, Jon watched as a large bull dorado broke the surface and inhaled his lure and twenty minutes later he landed his fish.

Fishing with Victor Sr. on Victoria, our flyfishing guests barely had their tackle rigged before the first school of ladyfish appeared several hundred yards after they boarded the boat. Throughout the day they had good luck catching snapper, jack crevalle, and skipjack.

More striped marlin seem to be arriving each day but are feeding on squid and not biting well. It's still a right place/right time kind of bite. However, on Sunday one of our boats landed three stripers and another had a pair of stripers and a pair of sails for their efforts.

The day my Father landed the wahoo and sails, another hotel boat next to them had a sail and striped marlin that they caught and released.

The volume of fish continues to grow! It looks as though when they finally settle down, the action should heat up like the weather.

Felipe Valdez