GOOD SPORTFISHING FOR A VARIETY OF GAME FISH

July 11, 2004, Eric Brictson, Gordo Banks Pangas, Los Cabos, San Jose del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

As the summer progresses, the weather is becoming increasingly warmer, more humid and tropical, though up until this point there have been no storms that have affected San Jose del Cabo or the Southern Baja peninsula. Early in the week thunderclouds developed over the local mountain range of "Sierra de la Laguna" and actually brought with it some isolated rainfall in certain foothill areas near San Jose del Cabo. There was also a strong southern swell sweeping in, bringing with it cooler and off colored greenish currents. This slowed down the blue water fishing action for a few days before cleaning back up over the weekend.

Overall San Jose del Cabo anglers found good fishing for the typical variety of game fish that are available during this time period. Daily catches included striped marlin, dorado, yellowfin tuna, skipjack, wahoo, pargo, amberjack, jack crevalle and roosterfish, there were also blue marlin starting to appear on the fishing grounds. Ocean conditions were relatively calm in the Sea of Cortez, where much of the sportfishing fleet was now concentrating, while the Pacific side did report some higher wind swells, water temperatures ranged from 78 to 84 degrees, over the weekend there was a general warming trend.

On Monday July 5th, the San Jose del Cabo La Playita panga fleet was not able to launch due to high surf conditions, and for the rest of the week they had to use extra caution in order to safely launch their pangas. With the construction of the new San Jose del Cabo Puerto Los Marina project in the village of La Playa now moving along at a strong pace the local San Jose del Cabo pangueros are now practicing perhaps their last summer season of launching directly off the beach and at times through powerful head high waves. This same swell attributed to scattering the schools of sardinas and mullet off of the San Jose del Cabo Estuary region and made for a shortage of live bait for many charters, though most days bait was obtainable, it just required longer waits and for less quantity.

Most common species being caught at this time out of San Jose del Cabo have been dorado and yellowfin tuna. Tuna made their strongest showing in recent days in the area from Gordo Banks to Iman. San Jose del Cabo anglers were landing anywhere from 2 to 8 tuna in the 5 to 50 pound class while using live sardinas and on trolled lures. The average sized fish were football sized, but then there were also some much larger fish mixed into the same schools. The consensus amongst San Jose del Cabo pangueros was that if they had more sardinas to chum the yellowfin into a feeding frenzy, this bite could really develop into something big.

San Jose del Cabo dorado numbers were up and down, varying according to water clarity, the size of the fish were ranging from peanut sized to over 40 pounds, with the majority of them seeming to be smaller female models and many of them fortunately were being released. Often the schools of dorado were first located by trolling feathers and then could be concentrated on with the live bait.

As San Jose del Cabo water conditions improved there was once again reports of scattered catches of wahoo, the majority of the strikes coming on trolled lures in the areas of blue water, fish sizes raged from 15 to 40 pounds. Numbers of the wahoo were very limited, though there was a chance of hooking into one or two of them in San Jose del Cabo areas while fishing for dorado and tuna. Billfish included sailfish, striped and blue marlin, San Jose del Cabo numbers were down, as this is transition time when the stripers start to move north towards cooler waters and local conditions start to ripen to attract more black and blue marlin.

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