WAHOO CAUGHT AT THETIS BANK WHILE FISHING WITH ROBERTO DURAN

Oct. 23, 2005, Bill Erhardt, Magdalena Bay, Thetis Bank, Mexico Fishing Report:

I fished on the Thetis Bank off Magdalena Bay yesterday, Saturday, October 22, and finally hooked up with some of those storied Thetis wahoo.

In spite of good intentions and a 4 a.m. departure from Loreto I did not launch the boat in Puerto Lopez Mateo until around 9:30 a.m.

My usual Mag Bay fishing companion, Ruben Duran, was helping friends in town from Ciudad Insurgentes with a beautiful old 25 foot Contender on a trailer with two flat tires.

We launched boats together and Ruben went out on the Contender.

I was accompanied by Ruben's 19 year old son, Ernesto, to increase the probability of negotiating the Magdalena Bay entrada without mishap.

We launched together but as it turned out I might just as well have put in three hours earlier since we did not see the other fishing boat again until late in the afternoon. When we cleared the Magdalena Bay entrada at Boca de Soledad we found 3 to 5 foot seas from the northwest and northwest winds of 8 knots or so.

We were able to maintain a speed of 15 to 18 knots as we headed toward the Thetis Bank.

We first got fishing lines in the water around 11:30 a.m., still short of the Thetis Bank about 10 miles when we nearly ran over a tailing marlin. We had no luck trolling on out to the bank except for one small skipjack.

At Thetis, we found no other fishing boats. The wind had picked up to 10 or 12 knots and it was clear from the spray while making a couple of turns around the ridge that it was going to be a wet ride back.

After fishing 45 minutes or so and still with nothing in the box, we started back toward the Magdalena Bay entrada. Within a mile of the bank, that beautiful high pitched whine from both sides of the boat signaled a double hook up on wahoo. A half-hour later, still within a couple of miles of the bank we got another. The wahoos hit a high-low combination of a wire rigged petrolero and yo-zuri bonito. The bonito took two.

Baja offshore fishing conditions on the way back did not allow speed over trolling speed, so we trolled. We had no action except for one football yellowfin and a few skipjack until we reached 220 foot water about 10 miles outside the Magdalena Bay boca. There we found the schools of small yellowfin that have been in the area each of the three times I have launched out of Puerto Lopez Mateos over the past seven weeks.

While fishing closer in, in water about 90 feet deep, we picked up a couple of bonus sierra mackerel.

Our final tally for this fishing trip was 3 wahoo, 5 yellowfin, 2 sierra and 6 or 8 skipjack. The two largest wahoo weighed 30 pounds, and the smaller one was about 5 pounds less.

The biggest yellowfin was around 20. A pretty good day, after a slow start, and it sure was nice to get some wahoo in the boat.

The surface water temperature all day was 74 to 75 degrees and the water, when the clouds let the sun shine through, was blue. The Ciudad Insurgentes contingent caught 1 dorado, and lost another and a marlin, so there is a nice variety right now in the Pacific outside Magdalena Island.

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