bajafly - 5-10-2011 at 06:19 AM
Endless Season Update May 9, 2011
REPORT #1255 "Below the Border"
Saltwater Fly-Fishing reports since 1996
East Cape
Offshore action was not what the doctor ordered for the fly-fishing angler. Near perfect weather with little wind and calm seas provided almost
perfect conditions but there were few fish to be found and the result was that dreaded trolling, trolling, trolling game so despised by most
fly-fishers.
The clever ones remained inshore and had a steady pick of a variety of something's…bonita, skipjack, jack crevalle, cabrilla, pargo, and in addition
to small roosters, a few teen’ers and one grande, which was taken from the shore by Lance Peterson.
The beaches are already as crowded as the trout opener in the Sierras, which has plenty of locals shaking their collective heads. One I bumped into on
the beach under the blazing midday sun commented. “The beach fishing scene has been changing for years, but now it has really turned the corner, at
least for me.” He continued, “It’s the classic ‘end of an era’. I talked with XXXX the other day and he was in total agreement. Way more people and
far less mystery. The cat is way out of the bag on this fishery!”
.
Current East Cape Weather http://tiny.cc/EastCapeWeather303
Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico
More fish than anglers is the best description I can think of for Magdalena Bay. Offshore, there are rumors of tonnage of bait but with so much green
water that it extends nearly twenty miles out. No one is sure of what is outside of the color line.
The esteros are producing the usual grouper, snapper and corvina but again with few, if any visiting anglers, it is tough to determine how good or bad
it is.
Current Magdalena Bay Weather http://tiny.cc/MagBayWeather150
Zihuatanejo, Mainland Mexico
The blue water is only four miles off the beach but offshore fishing has yet to recover from the three day, 179 boat, tournament this last weekend.
Water temperatures have warmed up all up and down the coast, and it appears the roosters have made it back. Adolfo, on the panga Dos Hermanos fished
with clients hooking 15 roosters from 15 to 25 kilos (33 to 55 pounds). He told me they missed a lot more. Most of the roosters were taken on surface
poppers.…Ed Kunze
Current Zihuatanejo Weather http://tiny.cc/zihuatanejo582
Cabo San Lucas
In a repeat of last weeks report, the striped marlin have remained at the 1150, or in the general area all week long. If you have good live bait there
is the possibility of action. The boats scoring best are using live bait as drop-backs on fish coming into the lures. A great catch this week was four
releases but almost everyone had at least one. I pulled on a fish myself this week for an hour on stand-up 30 pound. It just would not give up; a nice
fish of over 150 pounds, scoring a release with live bait. We also had one of about 130 pounds on a lure. Plenty of Jumpers and feeders most days; we
had an active feeder right along the side of the boat while I was fighting my fish, but there was no more bait left.
What was interesting was the number of thresher sharks we saw early in the morning, we must have seen at least ten. We were seeing a lot more marlin
this week as well, and some boats reported seeing over 100 fish during a day’s trip. If the warm water continues we might be seeing some blues and
blacks soon. There were swordfish seen again this week in the area just to the north of the Gordo Banks and one boat caught one six miles off of Grey
Rock as well.
I saw a couple of white flags that may have represented yellowfin this week, but they may have been for bonita as well since I heard of no yellowfin
being caught over the radio, nor did anyone I talk to mention any tuna.
A few yellow flags once again indicated the catch of some dorado, but there was no hot and heavy bite, at least not yet. Warm water means they can’t
be far behind though. We sure are looking forward to the first school of them coming through!
We are coming through the new moon phase so there were few wahoo reported, but there were a couple of decent fish caught. The ones I heard about were
said to be in the 35-pound class and were caught by boats trolling lures for striped marlin.
On the Pacific side there has been a great bite on small roosterfish to 10 pounds with a few 20 pound fish in the mix and a decent bite on sierra. The
key to action was to get sardina as chum and bait, otherwise things were a bit slow. Nice action was had on jack crevalle as well… man those fish can
fight! The yellowtail seem to have moved north following the cooler water as the last report I had on any decent action was from the rock points up
past Golden Gate Bank…George and Mary Landrum
Current Cabo Weather http://tiny.cc/cabo191