Tailhunter Fish Report

July 1, 2007 by riplipboy

PHOTO 1: What a gem of a photo and fish! No lie…we had it on a scale. This is what a 60 pound wahoo looks like! Johnny Bartee from Glendora CA is given an assist on the left by Alan Isham of Pomona CA (check out his cool shirt…”I see dead fish!”). This neat fish was taken off Las Arenas dragging the rapala you see still hanging from the mouth. It was certainly a good week for wahoo for our Las Arenas fleet although as the week went on, fishing got a bit tougher.

WEEK STARTS GOOD BUT FULL MOON, GREEN WATER, LOTS OF WATER TRAFFIC AND WINDS HAMPER THE BITE!

La Paz / Las Arenas Fishing Report for July 1, 2007

Photo 2: Some really nice wahoo this week for our Las Arenas folks! Jeff Sakuda from Monterey Park comes down 3 times a year and always does well with Captain Jorge. Check out the nice wahoo. The wahoo continued to show a preference for trolled dark Rapalas and Yozuri Magnums.

PHOTO 3: OK…just had to put this in. It’s me and I do not have a hat or my bandana on so don’t be writing me about it! That’s not the point! Len and Cheryl Atkinson brought me THREE In-N-Out double-double animal style burgers in vacuum sealed bags! As much as I love Mexican food, sometimes you just GOTTA eat something not wrapped in a tortilla and covered with salsa! If only there was a way to get the hot french fries down here!

PHOTO 4: The dorado were hit and miss this week after two weeks of pretty solid fishing. The dorado bite got a bit picky. Lots of small fish, but occasionally some sweet mahi like this bull held up by our amiga “camp counselor” Marianne Sugawara from Cerritos CA. Marianne had a good few days of fishing including nailing a wahoo.

PHOTO 5: Danny Kadota, famous S.California sportfishing captain and ex-rep for Loomis rods (now with Quantum) and his brother Steve, love fishing inshore for pargo, jacks and other species. They nailed these nice amberjack in the shallows. Despite the fact that it’s July, inshore fishing remains steady for amberjack, pargo, roosterfish, cabrilla and even the occasional sierra! If you want action, just tell your skipper you want to chase some of these bad boys in the rocks!

PHOTO 6: Here’s a great story. Kasidy and Cassi Manhart came all the way from Utah. Their plane forgot them (Delta) AND lost their luggage too! But, both came with great attitudes (and Cassi is also pregnant with their first!) and they wacked fish! They got a number of species which was incredible for first times. On these wahoo…people come for years and never even get a wahoo to sniff. These two were trolling about 5 minutes into the day when WHACK! One rod goes off. While one of them is fighting it the other lure just happened to be sitting dead in the water when the second wahoo came up and blew it apart!

PHOTO 7 : It’s impossible not to post up this photo. Dorado fishing kinda tapered a bit. There’s alot of them out there the last few days, but they weren’t always very cooperative and many of those that were caught were too small to be worth keeping so thankfully, guys were throwing them back…that’s how small they were. Kasidy had no problem with this big bull. Live bait and trolled feathers did the best on these larger fish this week.

PHOTO 8: Hector Chacon from the San Gabriel Valley area in S.California came down with his family. They took two boats out one day. Fishing stunk. Nothing. Zero. Then, Hector remembered that his wife had packed BANANAS in the ice chest. He remembered that I said bananas are bad luck. So, he tossed all the bananas into the ocean. Within minutes they were hooked up. Bonito, dorado and even a mako shark were hooked. They yelled over to his father’s boat to “THROW AWAY THE BANANAS!” But, it was too late. The other boat got skunked.

“I still can’t believe we fell victim to the banana curse ! I couldn’t get what was happening, that morning, all three of our trolling lines got snagged not once but twice ! We finally threw some live bait and got lots of action but could not hook anything except a baby dorado which we let go. Finally I remembered that we had brought bananas for the kids to snack on and told my wife and daughter, to throw them over board. Not five minutes later two bonita’s hit our feathers. They became bait which enabled us to hook a small shark, and two dorado,” said Hector.

PHOTO 10: We encourage the release of our billfish, but sometimes the fish dies and it can’t be released. The meat is never wasted! For both our La Paz and Las Arenas fleet, they are seeing tons of marlin out here, but they don’t often go for the bait or lures. Other times, they charge the boat like mad dogs. I’m happy to say that we’re releasing about 85 percent of our billfish catch. This sailfish was caught by Captain Victor and John Berry, from Los Angeles, who owns the Big Fish Electric Company.

PHOTO 12: Chris Sena from Lafayette CA hung this big headed wahoo with our Las Arenas fleet. That’s S.Cerralvo Island in the background. There were a few days early in the week where there were spots of wahoo so thick and free-swimming that the commercial pangeros were actually harpooning them with sharpened rebar tied to a rope! Talk about cowboy fishing!

PHOTO 13: Tony Adamich and Brendan hold a pargo, a tuna and a striped marlin. I’ll let Tony tell it: “…in two days we caught eight Dorado, 5 tuna, 3 Red Snapper and too many dorado to even count and released…and that was during a supposed slow week.”

PHOTO 14: Folks ask about flyfishing all the time down here and it’s getting more and more popular. Chris Anderson from Brentwood CA shows the power of our fish. He hooked a striped marlin on his flyrod and fought it for quite sometime. That is…until the marlin straightened the hook! Epic! I believe he told me it was a Gamakatsu or Owner hook which are some of the strongest you can tie on!

THE FISH REPORT:

For once, maybe the photos don’t tell all the story. Some great fish caught, no doubt, but most of the time this week, we really had to work at it.

It wasn’t easy. You could work it all over the ocean and then hit a productive spot at the very end or nothing at all. It was weird. If you fish a couple of days, everyone still got fish and believe me there were some banner wahoo, billfish, dorado and roosters caught, but if you were only fishing one day…you could hit a rough spot!

Normally at this time, we’re pretty much great guns on the dorado and most of the bluewater species, but lingering winds pushed up some cold green waters from down deep turning much of the water chilly. Let me put it this way. On the surface, it would be 80 degrees but only 15 or 20 feet below, there’s a thermocline that’s 65 degrees and COLD!

The fish are confused or lockjawed! The water temps change from day to day almost and you could see dozens of marlin sitting lazily on the surface or else tons of dorado that won’t bite. The next day at the same spot it’s utter chaos! It’s just really hard to know.

Cold green water combined with a few other factors as well…I hate to admit it, but this WAS the full moon plus there’s a ton of water traffic out there. As the week went on we started out with some pretty decent fishing but as the weekend drew nearer and the city got more crowded so did the traffic on the water PLUS there was a big local dorado tournament over the weekend.

None of these things by itself would have done much to impact the fish, but all together…the put a whammy on the bite!

But, enough of the negative…here’s some positive stuff…

1. At Las Arenas, our fleets still got some great inshore fishing for pargo, amberjack, roosters and jack crevalle as well as big bonito plus offshore species like wahoo and dorado. It’s not wide open, but this past week, Las Arenas was the better place to be so we switched alot of our clients over to Las Arenas. There’s definitely more action at Las Arenas.

2. Marlin marlin marlin…everywhere. Sometimes the bite and other times you’d think you threw a stinky sock at them. They swim away Of the ones we have hooked this week, most are getting released but our biggest was a 350 pounder and a 150. Many first timers hooked their first marlin this week.

4. Lots of mako sharks around. Great eating and we’re putting a few on the boat, but most times, they bite through the line like it was a wet noodle.

5. More sargasso weed buildging up which heralds some great dorado season upcoming

6. Bait has been tougher to get with the winds so get loaded; get on board; be the first one to get to the fishing grounds. That means if you dawdle, you might be SOL on getting bait.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

That’s my story!

Jonathan

Jonathan Roldan’s

Tailhunter International

Website: http://www.tailhunter-international.com/

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