SUMMER FISHING FOR DORADO IS SLOW
DURING TRIP OUT OF BAHIA DE LOS ANGELES

Aug. 18, 2005, John Segoria, Bahia de los Angeles, Baja California, Mexico Fishing Report:

Marcos Martinez and I fished in Bahia de los Angeles on Sunday, August 14th. Unfortunately, the dorado bite completely bottomed out. We managed to catch some sierra, cabrilla, barracuda, one dorado, and one bonito.

We had no problem catching bait but the fishing at Bahia de los Angeles was very tough.

I hooked up with one nice yellowtail on the iron at Animas, but lost it to a very large bull seal.

I later found a nice sargassum paddy just a little further away that had a nice school of dorado on it. We hooked three and managed to only get one in.

Unfortunately, another panga skipper saw what was going on and decided to sit on top of the paddy. One of his clients hooked a dorado and got it wrapped up in the paddy. To make it worse, the three seals that we had lost earlier followed this panga to our paddy and everything shut down. Ironically, the name of the panga was "Dorado."

We left and came back to the paddy later and it was loaded with dorado again. I hooked up deep and was working the fish up when I saw the same stinking bull seal moving in and he grabbed my fish and took off with us in hot pursuit. However, he managed to totally decimate my fish before my very eyes. That was pretty much it for us.

The seals in Bahia de Los Angeles are definitely starting to become a major problem and are beginning to rival their American brothers. Perhaps if the Mexican government would ban the commercial fishing for sharks the seal population could be better controlled.

We stayed at Camp Gecko and had a great time as always. Great snorkeling in warm water. We will be back.

Bahia de los Angeles weather was unseasonably cool at night. The wind was not a favorable one. It wasn't blowing really hard, just out of the wrong direction.

Water temperatures were fine, high 70s to low 80s with a shallow thermocline.

As we were leaving Bahia de los Angeles on Monday, still on the road going out of town, we saw a low lying super heavy marine layer creeping over the local mountains that we thought was just a local event. This was not the case. The heavy marine layer was just sitting about 200 to 500 feet off the ground, sometimes much lower, for about 10 miles out on the Mex 1 past the Bahia de los Angeles junction. I have never seen this before. You would expect it along the Pacific side but not this far inland. All in all it was a great trip. I swear, I could have punched that *&*(&()& seal! If I wanted to loose yellowtail to a seal, I could have stayed home and done it off La Jolla.