JUST ONE RAINBOW RUNNER DURING A 2-DAY FISHING TRIP

Aug. 20, 2006, Mark Rein, Big Kahuna fishing report:

Friday, Aug. 18, 2006:

Puerto Vallarta had a breezy, moderate swell with waves breaking in Paradise Village marina breakwater in the morning. The afternoon was pretty much back to normal, smooth, slight breeze, and partly cloudy. The water was 86 degrees and a clean blue.

We had a long fishing day with not much to show for it.

We spent the morning fishing at Roca Corbeteña and struggled to even make bait. Lots of boats were there, but we did not see much action going on. The radio was pretty quiet in the morning and dead in the afternoon.

About 1:30 p.m. we decided to go check out El Banco. We arrived to find bait boiling and we quickly filled the tubes and had two more that got rigged and went right back in. We worked the area until about 6 p.m. in hopes of a late bite that did not come.

Just before packing it in and heading home, we tried a cabby on the high spot to see if anything was home. After a long day of nada, my friend Randy Raskin was surprised to finally see a pole with a real bend in it. After a fun fight on lighter tackle, up pops a nice rainbow runner to save the day, kind of, which was also a new species for the boat. A quick photo and back in the water it went.

We never saw any breaking fish or jumpers all day. We are going to try it again tomorrow. There was a huge lightning and thunder show tonight around the bay but offshore it was clear and calm.

Saturday, Aug. 19, 2006, Puerto Vallarta:

Puerto Vallarta had a small swell, smooth water, cooler temperatures from last night's rain and cloud cover today. The water temperature was 86-88 degrees and a clean blue.

We fished inshore around the Marietas Islands until noon. There was lots of bait. We filled the live well in 30 minutes, but caught nothing else.

We ran out to Corbeteña Rock to see what was happening there. We arrived to find only a few fishing boats so we figured this was not the place to be but stuck around anyway. We heard later that there were a lot more boats at El Banco.

We concentrated on some high spots west of the Rock where the bait was up in large numbers all afternoon. We finally saw some crashing medium size tunas come up somewhat near us late in the afternoon. Two other boats were already set up in the same area with kites up but I do not know if they got any. The fish went down by the time we got there within minutes. They were only at the surface for a couple passes through some bait and then we did not see them again.

We did run across a very large 2-3 inch thick mooring rope that looked like it had been in the water a while. It was barely visible until we stumbled across it west of the Rock. I hope no boats end up with this in their props. I did not have anything with me that would float to mark it.

Anyway, the rope had formed into a circle about 10 feet around and fish were hitting the surface but only in the middle of the circle. We thought it might be a net with fish trapped in the middle, but it was not. It had a mixed bag of fish jumping around like they were playing. I saw one that looked like a grouper and two dodos that bolted as soon as we got close. We worked this for a while and still nada. There was a huge amount of bait under this rope so we were not surprised that nothing paid attention to our baits.

So, today was a total boat ride except we are now very good at catching bait that no other fish seem to want to eat.

Our Puerto Vallarta marina neighbor took his unbelievable blue-hulled 130 foot yacht fisher out to El Banco very early this morning and said the bait was very skittish and hard to catch. They worked that area all day for nada too. What's up with the Puerto Vallarta fish lately? It seems you either get lucky and are the one that catches the cow d'jour or it is slow.

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