Santa Rosalia, Mexico:
Fall Sportfishing Season Approaches

Oct. 1, 2005, Mike Kanzler, Isla San Marcos, Santa Rosalia, Baja Sur fishing, Mexico:

October is here and the fall fishing season is getting going at Santa Rosalia, but with some summer days still lingering.

Santa Rosalia fishing area weather this week has had it contrasts, with northwesterly wind during the beginning of the week, and a tropical storm approaching now with strong humidity. Air temperatures Santa Rosalia are at 95 to 85 degrees at present, with a few drops of rain today. Water temperatures are still warm at 82-85 degrees, with good visibility of 40-50 feet offshore, to only 20 feet inshore.

Fishing this week around Santa Rosalia was fair.

I started the week fishing locally with my son in front of our house for good numbers on Sierra. Reports from San Lucas Cove, the Moosea boat of Jim and Marika Anderson, were of great sierra action along with huge schools jack crevalle turning the water to a froth feeding on bait.

With last week's report of yellowfin tuna in the Mulege area, my first run of the week was to be picked up by Jim and Marika and to run offshore and see if we could find those elusive tunas. However, we got a short ways off the back side of San Marcos island only to decide it was a bit too choppy to make the run out, and we opted to fish the ranch. We picked up some small yellowtail and a few cabrilla on iron.

Starting on Friday, I had Walter Cox of Encinitas, Calif., his son Stephen and his friend Garrett Sailer of Seattle, Wash., out for a two day run.

Fishing the first day, with TS Otis still far to the south, but close enough to cancel out the high pressure in the north, making for calm water, we made a run to Tortuga island.

After making bait with ease at the Santa Rosalia marina, we ran for the island. We started fishing at my trusty grouper hole and, yup, pulled some nice Leopard grouper, Sawtail grouper and a bonus Gulf grouper. Hey, that's a grouper grand slam. Ha ha ha. Four Leopards were of 6-10 pounds, 2 Sawtails of 15-25 pounds, and Walter's Gulf grouper topped 50. All were caught on live bigeyes using dropper loop rigs in 250 feet of water.

With the fish box nearly filled, we tried a little Sailfish slow troll with live bait. It took a little longer than last week, but had three for four takes, and released Stephen's and Garrett's first, caught on a double hook up by the way.

Saturday, Santa Rosalia weather was changing quick to overcast skies, few drops, and swirling winds. We decided to stay close to home and fished San Marcos island water, where it was slow going. We still picked up a few nice cabrilla and 17 pound yellowtail after fishing most the bajos of the island.

That's this week. It should be interesting with the storm bearing down on us.

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