YELLOWFIN TUNA CAUGHT NORTHEAST OF TOWN

Oct. 8, 2005, Bill Erhardt, Loreto, Mexico, Baja California Sur:

Hurricane Otis came and went last weekend with little affect on Loreto fishing. We got only a little rain, not enough to flush debris sufficient to hold dorado out of the arroyos, and a couple of days of winds of 20 knots or so.

By Tuesday the sea at Loreto had calmed enough to be fishable if you don't mind a little bit of spray.

I fished three days at Loreto this week with varying success.

Fishing on Tuesday, with my brother Cliff who was visiting from Oregon, I went south to White Rock where two weeks earlier there had been billfish, dorado and tuna, along with many hundreds of rays basking and and entertaining with aerial acrobatic displays.

We found surface water temperatures of only 82 degrees and no sign of either fish or rays. By midmorning the water had calmed enough to run north to a point five miles or so off Punta Perico. Trolling two or three more hours off Perico and Punta Lobo also produced nothing but a couple of halfhearted bites and we went home skunked.

Fishing on Wednesday, with Cliff and sister-in-law Sharon, I went northeast of the Loreto marina about 25 miles. There was a moderate chop as we ran to the fishing grounds but shortly after sunup a north wind of 10 knots or so developed.

In a building chop and whitecaps we lucked upon a small pod of porpoise with hungry yellowfin tuna under them. Over a period of about 2 1/2 hours in the late morning we boated 14 yellowfin tuna, the largest 45 pounds. We lost a couple more trying to deal with three lines on a 17 foot boat in 3 - 4 foot seas.

The yellowfin hit cedar plugs and jet heads as well as marlin lures.

At around 11 a.m. the tuna bite stopped, although the porpoise continued to feed on small bait fish.

On the way back to the Loreto marina we caught and released a sailfish.

This was just exactly the kind of Loreto fishing day I had hoped for for my visiting kin who are more accustomed to the dainty little lake trout in Oregon that would be too small for the bait bucket on the Baja.

Fishing on Friday, my brother and I went back north to where we left the porpoise and tuna two days earlier. We could find no porpoise and five hours trolling yielded nothing. In the early afternoon on the way home we hooked a big sailfish that spit the hook after running out half a spool of line. The only thing that kept a skunk out of the boat was an ambitious dorado about 5 pounds that bit on a marlin lure as we approached Isla Coronado.

In the aftermath of Otis, the surface water temperature in the sea off Loreto has dropped about 5 degrees. The highest water temperature I saw all week was 85 degrees. Loreto weather also changed markedly at midweek. The air temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the relative humidity about 10 percent. It feels like autumn in Baja California.

(See "Mexico Fishing News" online for current fishing reports, photos, weather, and water temperatures from Loreto and other major Mexican sportfishing areas. Vacation travel articles, fishing maps and seasonal calendars, and fishing related information for Loreto may be found at Mexfish.com's main Loreto page.