Santa Rosalia, Mexico: No Dorado But Yellowtail Fishing Is Steady At Isla San Marcos

June 4, 2005, Mike Kanzler, Isla San Marcos, Santa Rosalia fishing, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

This week's fishing at Santa Rosalia started with a bang and somewhat trickled off. We're still experiencing strange weather and water temperatures for this time of year.

The fishing weather at Santa Rosalia has been really cool for this part of the season, cool enough to want a light jacket in the morning hours and not reaching the highs that we should be having during the days. Mornings are around the low 60s, with some fog on both sides, west and east of here, only making it's way in the area once this week. Daytime highs are just at 80 degrees. There were also a few days of northwest wind, but still fishable water with a little chop.

Water temperatures in the Santa Rosalia fishing area are still off the mark, with 68-70 degrees around the inshore and the island. There are reports of mid to high 70s offshore. Water visibility is improving a bit from last week, at 30 feet on the bajos and 50 plus feet offshore.

At the beginning of the week's fishing, I had my boat and Daniel Lopez's boat run out, with Wade and his father Chuck Kohlhase of Mesa, Arizona, on my boat and Ned Hunt and Ron Hunt on the other boat, also of Mesa.

We fished the north end bajos of Isla San Marcos for three days. The mornings were crisp with a slight chill. Bait wasn't the easiest to catch, but we managed enough every day.

The first day we fished the hot bite at the west lighthouse with about 15 other commercial pangas from San Bruno winging huge squid like irons in every direction. Good numbers were had by all. As for us, using live mackerel on slider sinker rigs, we kept up with the other boats.

The next two days saw a steady return of, yes, calamari. They're back, not big ones, but around 1-4 pounders. However, they still can eat your bait, so we had to move off the west light area to the outside bajos, where we found great yellowtail fishing on the famous 110 bajo. The total take for the three days was something in the nature of 5-8 fish per boat for each day. The fish ranged in the 23-25 pound class with a few big boys sneaking in here and there to over 30 pounds.

I also fished a solo day at midweek and found that the bite had slowed up a little, but I was still able to catch 4 nice yellowtail.

The last fishing trip this week was with a visiting Gypsum Company by the name of PABCO Gypsum from the San Francisco Bay area. We used two boats and had Kurt Peterson and Steve Wright on mine, and with Dan Rivera along with Agustine Casanova on the other. Well, "slow," sums it up about right. We scratched for two yellows on my boat and one on the other. Better than getting the skunk. One fish did hit the mid 30-pound mark.

I hope the water warms and cleans up, bring some much needed Dorado action into the mix once again.

One of the Santa Rosalia squid processing plants will open this weekend bring much needed work for the locals here. However rumors have it that for the small squid only 1.5 pesos will be paid per kilo, or about 7 cents per pound. The Dorado better show up soon!

Yellowtail caught off Isla San Marcos, Mexico.

AT THE GYPSUM MINE--Steve Wright, Kurt Peterson and Dan Rivera, here at the gypsum works of Isla San Marcos, caught yellowtail to 35 pounds while fishing with the island's Mike Kanzler at the 110 bajo. Photo courtesy Mike Kanzler.

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