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Archive for July, 2006

Posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2006| Leave a Comment »

SUMMER STORM MARS DORADO BITE BUT BIG BULLS CHEW POST RAIN – La Paz Fishing for July 30, 2006

Photo: Blake Cook was on his first trip from Utah and got this nice bull dorado. N0. . . he didn’t catch the fish in the desert. He’s standing at the nude beach at Balandra north of La Paz.

MOTHER NATURE SPANKS THE FISHING

Not much to tell you! We had one of the best dorado bites in the history of mankind happening then this week, tropical storm Emelia came and shut it all down with rain and wind for almost 3 days and we had to cancel boats. Since the storm ended, however, it looks like it washed a lot of stuff into the water that’s already starting to shape up in long current lines for the dorado so we expect a nice comeback.

Boats late in the week were finding some dorado and marlin. Actually, the dorado that were found were all big bulls! Bob Sayre of Chicago got 4 fish over 40 pounds. No dinks! (Of course, Bob thought the fish were all 60 pounders, but the captain said they were all 40-50 pound fish legitimately). Temps are back to the mid-90’s and the coming week looks clear. Water temps are interestingly just about the same as the air…92.

AERO CALIFORNIA

The airline we love to hate now says no flights before Aug. 10th. However, check this out…don’t count on it. All of a sudden, they finally put up their website at http://www.aerocalfornia.com/. Yes, it looks like they will fly. Want the bad news? No where on their website is Los Angeles or any other international destination listed, We been jammed! It looks like they will only be a domestic carrier. Rat bastards! Here’s what I’d do if I were holding an Aero Cal ticket:

1. Contact your credit card company to reverse charges
2. Fly Aero Mexico / Aero Litoral (same company) to La Paz
3. Fly any number of carriers into Cabo and we’ll arrange shuttles back up to La Paz

Or…

4. I’m sorry, amigos…you can call me to cancel your trip or we’ll get you credit for a future trip if you have deposits with us.

ALASKA AIR

Alaska Air starts flying Oct. 30th and the response has been extremely strong. We’re already taking reservations for November. There’s some good rates, pescadores. Let us know if you’re interestested.

That’s my story!
Jonathan

Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter International

Website: www.tailhunter-international.com
Phone: (626) 333-3355FAX: (626) 333-0115
E-Mail: Riplipboy@aol.com
U.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745

“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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Posted in Uncategorized on July 22, 2006| Leave a Comment »

DORADO GO BALLISTIC FOR BEST BITE OF SEASON – La Paz Report for July 23, 2006

PHOTOS OF THE WEEK

Photo 1

Gina Ferialdi’s Group comes down each year and got into an unbelieveable dorado bite with each boat getting early limits of fish up to 42 pounds. The group pulled away from schools of fish that were still boiling around the boat simply because they were out’ve bait and tired! Here’s some of the group with some of the larger bulls. Left to right: Gina Ferialdi (Sierra Madre CA); Ken Blaustein (Pasadena CA); John Knowles (Pasadena CA); Lisa Brandley (Monrovia CA); Dave Brandley (Monrovia CA); John Dunne (Sierra Madre CA); Leo Dunn IV (Durango CO); Brianne Dunn (Durango CO); Leo Dunn III (Pasadena CA).


Photo 2

Self Explanatory! It’s easy to get them to pose for me! I hate boring photos! Thanks, Gang!

THE FISH REPORT

POSSIBLY THE BEST DORADO BITE OF THE SEASON AS FISH GO AIRBORNE!

Last week the full moon dorado bite was phenomenal and I thought it just couldn’t get better. I was wrong.

This week the bite right in front of La Paz between Espiritu Santo Island and Cerralvo Island exploded day after day with more dorado than I have seen in several seasons. Fish between 10 and 40 pounds were the average with boats spanking so many fish and catching and releasing as fast as they could go being finished and plugged sometimes as early as 9:30 or 10 a.m. out of bait and out of energy. I had one laughable experience this week. I was aboard with Lisa Brandley and Gina Ferialdi and Captain Raul “Chito” Martinez. The husbands were on another boat trying to fight off their own dorado.

Both ladies were fighting fish. The captain had another one on the rod. I was holding a rod in each hand with fish on each rod trying to hang on when one of the wives screamed. There were so many dorado jumping through the air, that one fish jumped into the panga then jumped out again and it wasn’t even hooked! That’s how nuts it has been this week!

There’s huge patches of sargasso weeds stretching all over from Las Cruces to the south north to about the Charro Bank and from Punta Norte at Cerralvo to the west near the wreckof the Salvatierra. Additionally, heck…just look for bird diving or drag a feather until it’s hit. Toss a few baits and watch the ocean explode with dorado.

The fish just turned stupid or something! It gets to the point where the fish are fighting and jumping over each other to attack the baits. On one day lone this week, I went through 50 hooks (that’s all you need) cutting fish loose or just re-tying hooks. At another point the fish were so voracious and I knew the clients were under control that I took my long whippy stick to the bow and tied on a big huge bass popper. I took off all hooks and just fired it out. Oh my!!! Watching 2, 3, or more dorado attack it at the same time and coming out’ve the water and watch them bump heads in mid-air or grab the lure and then have it fly out’ve their mouths…hit the water again with a splash and have more dorado attack it was just one of the coolest things to do. All you really had to do was cast it out and give it a twitch and watch dorado bee-line towards the lure and try to inhale it!!!

I sure got a scare at one point this week. You know I take our services pretty seriously and personal. John Dunne and his wife, Gina, went out one day and came back looking very serious. There was obviously a problem! Oh-no. John said that they had an issue to take up with me and that I had lied to them. That’s pretty serious stuff when someone says I lied!
“What?” My heart was sinking. John and Gina aren’t just clients…they are good friends.
“You lied to us,” said John. “You told us we’d catch all our fish by 10:30 a.m.!”
I didn’t know what to say. Had they taken me that literally? I could feel me self tense up and prepare to get blasted.
“Yes, you lied. We did not catch all our fish by 10:30. We caught them by 10:20!!!!!” With that they broke out laughing!
I literally sank to the ground trying to stop my heart from freezing. Joke’s on me! I’m gonna get ’em back next time…(do you hear that, JD?)
On the other side…
Las Arenas boats have had a so-so bite compared to La Paz with all the dorado. Either our Las Arenas guys are headed out to the buoys off Muertos or headed far north to mix it up with our La Paz boats in the Channel in the sargasso between Espiritu Santo and north Cerralvo Island (long danged way!) No wahoo have show up at all this season, but roosters (smaller ones); pargo; cabrilla and pompano have been the main catch which are all great eating fish and fun on light tackle. Don’t know where all the marlin have gone, but no hookups this week although there’s sightings a-plenty.

Folks…just being out on the water this week has been great. In addition to just WATCHING the dorado, there are huge schools of porpoise of several different varieties, sea turtles, manta rays, pilot whales and whale sharks cruising. Everyday bring some new surprise or two…or three!

It’s hot, humid and sunny with air temps in the low 100’s and water temps in the low 90’s. Not really much else going on besides the dorado, but no one is complaining.

ALASKA AIR FINALLY ANNOUNCES NEW SCHEDULE

In case you didn’t get my announcement earlier this week, Alaska Air is finally coming in and has announced it’s schedule. Beginning Oct. 30, it might be too late to save a lot of folks holding Aero Cal tickets but Alaska will start flying Mondays, Wednesday, and Saturdays. There are some great rates. In fact, if you contact Alaska Air, and buy tickets before July 31, they have tickets as low as $125 one day from LAX to La Paz! The tickets have to be used before Dec. 19th. Check that out. http://www.alaskaair.com/Default.aspx?ASDBD=J1

Fishing in the late fall can be pretty darned good, amigo. It’s transitional time and all depends on whether the winds start blowing from the north. If they start, water temps can drop rapidly as do air temps and the whole complexion of our fishing changes. If the winds hold off, we can still have incredible fishing! The last 3 seasons, the winds held off and we continued to catch dorado, marlin, sailfish, wahoo, tuna, pargo, yellowtail, and other warm water species well into the Christmas holidays. Click here for our fishing charts: http://tailhunter-international.com/fishingchart.htm

For anyone who books with us between Nov. 1 and Dec. 19th, we’ll give you a 10 percent discount on any of our regular fishing packages. (Condos, suites, not included and cannot be utlitized with any other packages).

That’s my story!
Jonathan

Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter InternationalWebsite: http://www.tailhunter-international.com/Phone: (626) 333-3355FAX: (626) 333-0115E-Mail: Riplipboy@aol.comU.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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FULL MOON DORADO INTENSE – La Paz Report of July 16

Posted in Uncategorized on July 16, 2006| Leave a Comment »




PHOTOS OF THE WEEK:

PHOTO 1 – 14 year-old Mike Harkins from Los Angeles has a knack for getting big fish each year he comes to La Paz including this sweet 30 pound class bull that he caught on the La Paz side this past week.

PHOTO 2 – A wild week of parties here, especially for the Jim Booth Group from Riverside. Here Jorge shows off his enhanced uh…chest against the Corona Girls during our big Corona Beach Party at La Concha Beach.

PHOTO 3 – Chris Silva from Riverside says it all. No explanation needed!

THE FISH REPORT

FULL MOON DORADO TEAR IT UP –

So much for that full-moon superstition! The dorado bit like their fins were on fire this week! In fact, it got to be a little too good. Usually sometimes if fishing isn’t so good, guys get frustrated and will cancel some fishing trips and decide to sleep in or lay on the beach. This week on several occasions, the fishing was so turbo, guys came back beat up and tired and canceled trip because they had no more room in their ice chests (even after releasing fish!) or strength in their arms!

The best fishing was on the La Paz side, but the buoys at Las Arenas were also holding fish. It was a case of just being on the right spot! You could go all day and scratch fish then hit the right sargasso patch or the right buoy and watch dorado life explode in your face and go non-stop bendo for the next hour! Just had to be patient. Sometimes the dorado rodeo was early. Sometimes it was late. Sometimes it was just spending that last 10 minutes out there on the water.

Once the fish were going, however…forget it!!! They’d bite a piece of tortilla flipped in the water! Guys were coming back with “tales of tails” literally charging the boat in a race to the baits. There were a lot of punk firecracker fish (many getting released), but there were also larger bulls in the 30-50 pound class as well.

I was on Black Magic one way with the youngsters from the Greg Leon group and the boys put a couple of 35 plus pound fish in the box, but not quite enough to beat the dads fishing the super pangas who got 40 plus pounders. Same for the Jim Booth group earlier in the week who also stuck some nice bulls as well as marlin, cabrilla and pargo. That’s what Steve Vetrone and his partner, Von did. When they got tired of all the dorado, they lit out for the rocks and went after the pargo and cabrilla which still seemed to be holding inshore.

No tuna or roosters or wahoo to speak of and the marlin bite was off, but that could also be a function of all the folks chasing dorado. I did go diving one day this week and the water temps were an incredible 87-92 degrees on the surface. I gotta tell ya that I dove through one rock overhang about 35 feet down and came face-to-face with about 30 nice sized dog tooth snapper that just stared back at me with grins like little kids caught with cookies and milk in the closet! I thought of all the times these danged fish had kicked my butt! These were 5-30 pound snapper and darned lucky they were hanging out in a protected area or else I’d have marked the spot on my GPS and been back in the morning.

We did have some thundershower roll throw that did opened the heavens on us with thunder, lightning and heavy rain. But they were short lived despite being spectacular.

FIESTA TIME

Special shout out to Jim Booth’s group out’ve La Paz. What a fun batch of folks. We hired them a big party tour bus to bring them up from Cabo loaded with drinks, music and video. We threw a big Corona party on the beach complete with the Corona gals and even a big taco cookout at the Sunset Bar where folks were up on the bar dancing and I was asked to preside over a wedding…as the PREACHER!!! Dave Aguilar and Denise Miller actually had flower and exchanged rings amid massive tequila toasting and good wishes as I held a broom over their heads and stood on a bar chair! Oh…and they also caught fish too!

HOTEL LOS ARCOS TO RE-OPEN

After almost two months of closure because of a labor dispute with the union, the two sides finally came to an agreement and the popular hotel will be opening July 17th, although their corporate offices tell me it’s more likely to be July 19th. Glad they’re opening. Lots of people had it rough with no work.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

In case you missed my posting, we were mentioned in a front page story of the business section in the Los Angeles Times on July 11th. In a story by Marty Zimmerman, he gives a good piece about the new airlines that might be flying into Baja next year. Here’s the link: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airmex10jul10,1,4126442.story?coll=la-headlines-business&track=crosspromo

That’s my story!
Jonathan
Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter InternationalWebsite: www.tailhunter-international.comPhone: (626) 333-3355FAX: (626) 333-0115E-Mail: Riplipboy@aol.comU.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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La Paz Fishing Report for July 10, 2006

Posted in Uncategorized on July 9, 2006| Leave a Comment »

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Retired dentist, Dr. Dave Perine from Washington state, repeatedly broke off in shallow water off Cerralvo Island on 130 pound leader and 80 pound mainline using big 24″ ladyfish as bait trying to land some of our big dog tooth pargo (cubera snapper). He finally got one in the boat…this 35 pounder with the aid of Capt. Valente, but these are the kind of toads (and larger) still taking anglers to school in the rocks right now.

THE FISH REPORT -DORADO SIZZLE ALONG WITH THE SUMMER – MARLIN STILL ON THE CHEW – TUNA POP AND TEASE AT LAS ARENAS – WAHOO YOOHOO? – AERO CALIFORNIA – PHOTO OF THE WEEK

MAHI RIP IT UP

Weather almost as hot as the fishing this past week with water temps finally hitting the 90’s and air temps tickling triple digits as well but at least it’s not humid like it was last week. Last week, the air was as thick and sticky as gravy!

Right now…for the fishing, if you put in a day or two on the water, it was pretty hard NOT to get bit by dorado. You might have an off day or miss the spot but for the most part, it’s dorado rodeo time with fish seemingly getting bigger and more and more bulls for both my Las Arenas and La Paz fleets.

Wish people would release more fish actually. No reason to be taking as many fish as I’ve seen. One guy (not our clients) was bragging about 100 fish today as I listened in a restaurant. I didn’t have the heart and was too pissed to ask him if he kept them all, but even if he kept 1/3 of them, that’s stupid. Heard someone else talking about 50 yesterday. C’mon…

Quite a few marlin and sails around sometimes literally begging to be fed. Tuna keep popping up at Las Arenas and surprising everyone for a day or two then going to ground then showing up again a day or two later. Nice grade 10-30 pound footballs. Still nice roosters around as well as big dog tooth pargo if you have the patience. Wahoo are in the area, but no one seems to be able to make one stick.

THE ELECTIONS AND AERO CALIFORNIA

Well, as expected, there was movement after last week’s July 2nd Presidential election. However, no one seems to be quite sure who won! Actually, PAN candidate Calderon won by the slimmest of percentage points, but it took like…4 days to figure it all out and opposition party candidate Obrador is screaming fraud as he won by something like 200,000 votes out’ve 40 million ballots! That’s a drop in the bucket. There have already been a few protests, but most are accepting the fact that Calderon is the new head hombre here.

What did that mean for us at ground zero who felt the Aero Cal fiasco was all politically motivated? Well, surprise…Aero Cal got the OK to officially fly and hit the air with 5 planes. The bad news? Aero Cal canceled all flight until at least July 17 with no end in sight…Lovely… That’s my story!
Jonathan
Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter International Website: www.tailhunter-international.comPhone: (626) 333-3355FAX: (626) 333-0115E-Mail: Riplipboy@aol.comU.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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LOTS OF SPECIES MIX IT UP – LA PAZ FISHING REPORT FOR JULY 2, 2006

Posted in Uncategorized on July 3, 2006| Leave a Comment »

Lenny Salazar from Lomita came down with his “Pez Gringo” buddies for the first time to La Paz and hit quite a variety of fish including this nice dorado and football tuna not too far from the Las Arenas beach.

TUNA and MARLIN BREAK IN WITH DORADO – MEXICO ELECTIONS – THIS COULD BE THE WEEK FOR AERO CALIFORNIA –
GREAT MIX OF FISH

Sure feels like August here! It’s hot. It’s sunny and sometimes humid too and the fishing reflects it. Fish we don’t normally see until late in the summer like big blue and black marlin have come to prowl with a number of hookups on surprised anglers who thought they were fishing light tackle for dorado only to find themselves suddenly hooked to 500 pound billfish!
The dorado have been really active for our La Paz fleet with fish scattered from El Bajo to the north end of Cerralvo to the Channel and down to Las Cruces. Sargasso weed lines have been productive and dorado in the 30-50 pound class are not uncommon. For my Las Arenas anglers, they have had more variety with not only dorado; but breezers of tuna off Punta Perrico; sailfish, marlin, roosterfish and even dog tooth (pargo perro) and mullet snapper (pargo lisa) in the rocks. Nice mix of fish!

The tuna are really a bonus. We used to have tuna frequently, but in the past few years, the bite has been pretty anemic as marine biologist tell me the fish haven’t left. They’re just way down deep and have no reason to come up because one of the big sources of food…squid are down there too.

Well, the past few weeks, the sharp rise in water temps has brought a bloom of algae resulting in a phenomenon called “red tide” where the oxygen levels become so depleted by the rise in plant life, it literally chokes off the oxygen to the larger species swimming around. It hasn’t been a problem outside in the blue water, but in the bay…whooo-weeeee…it sure gets stinky as squid, mollusk, inshore fish and other marine life wash up daily emitting a stink as they roast in the Baja sun as folks try frantically to clean it up. This is just a natural thing we get a few times a year so no big deal, but for whatever reason, as the squid have shown up with great frequency, it’s not surprising that the tuna also seem to move into shallower waters.

If you’re coming down and the tuna are still around, you want to be fishing with as light a tackle as possible. I’d suggest 20-25 pound test for these fish and a short leader of flurocarbon wouldn’t hurt either!

MEXICO ELECTIONS

July 2nd is Mexico’s national election day as President Fox only serves one 6-year term as proscribed by Mexican law. At the time of me writing this, the polls were too close to call, but locals in droves were at the polls. Be interesting to see how it comes out and what effect it will have on everything else.

AERO CALIFORNIA

Could this be the week it happens? Aero Cal has promised that right after the elections, tickets would be on sale again and flights would resume. I’m so tempted to point my finger and call…’B.S.” but I gotta try to remain optimistic. That’s my story!
Jonathan
Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter InternationalWebsite: www.tailhunter-international.comPhone: (626) 333-3355FAX: (626) 333-0115E-Mail: Riplipboy@aol.comU.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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