PHOTO 1: Steve Greanias has a banner day out of Las Arenas although he did catch more fish out’ve La Paz. It’s hard to top a 70 pound class amberjack ripped off the south side of Cerralvo Island. Usually, these bigger members of the jack family (think yellowtail on steroids) are around high spots, structure and pinnacles, but this bad boy struck a trolled lure in deep water! Great eating!
HURRICANE HENRIETTE BLOWS THROUGH AND SAME TIME MORE EARTHQUAKES GIVE US A JOLT WHILE FISHING TAKES A POWDER BUT STARTS TO BOUNCE BACK!
La Paz – Las Arenas Fishing Report for September 9, 2007
PHOTO 2: Now THIS is what a dorado is supposed to look like! What a beast! This 45 pound bull is being held by Captain Gerardo and the smiling guy is Dr. Jim Stewart who tells me during the winter he lives in Arizona and the rest of time time near Jackson Hole, Wy. The fish were scratchy after the storms disturbing the waters not to mention probably shaken by all the tremors we’ve been having. Of all the fish, the dorado seemed to come back online fastest with our best fishing being done by our La Paz fleet.
PHOTO 3 : Who said you can’t catch roosters during the fall. Steve Greanias (above with amberjack) and dad, Chris (below with chilicano) jumped on two 60-70 pound class roosters off Las Arenas. One of them was fought with the reel completely backlashed in an epic battle. Both fish were released. After the hurricane we had a nice flurry of roosters start biting along the sandy beaches between El Sargento and Punta Pescadero. The larger the bait, the better the chance at one of these big sluggers! Quite a few others were hooked this week, but over-anxious anglers didn’t let the big fish eat the big baits and dropped the fish. Gotta let the big dogs chew their bones before you set the hook! 
PHOTO 4: Good frends of mine, Ivan Lau and his dad, Ivan, Sr. from El Monte CA came in right after the storm and fished 3 days with us. First day they hammered the dorado fishing out of La Paz. On their second day, they got roosters, as well as some yellowfin and dorado. The yellowfin had been on a tear before the storm, but they were harder to find after the storm. The fish are surely out there and some of the fish later in the week were in the 20-40 pound class, but a lack of bait to chum the fish up, was the most prohibitive issue. If you had the sardines to use as chum, you could get the tuna to bite the hooked baits. If you’re coming down, the sardines are small. Consider using smaller hooks like #2’s for the tinier ‘dines!
PHOTO 5: What the???? Is it a mutant sardine? Is it a big mullet? Actually, it’s a milkfish which we call chilicanos! In all my years down here this is only the second one that I’ve seen hooked on rod and reel. They often school off Cerralvo Island, but rarely take a bait. This 30 pounder inhaled a sardine fished by Chris Greanias. He said it was quite a battle with long runs and spectacular leaps! 
PHOTO 6: Jamie Smith (right) from Malibu and Avo Oughourlian (left) hung these nice dorado off Las Arenas. It was encouraging that the dorado came back so fast after the storm with the fishing better at La Paz than Las Arenas. However, at the time of writing this report, there’s some magnificent debris lines forming up from all the stuff washed into the water from the hurricane. Once these form up and the water clear up, look out! Traditionally, this stuff brings in all kinds of beast that hunker down under the debris.
PHOTO 6: People come for years and years hunting the elusive wahoo and never get a sniff. Steve Button from Santa Clara CA got only 1 fish this day, but it was a fish he had been hunting. Taken on the dark purple rapala below, he said they had barely put the rods in the water and the big Hoo zipped it. Wahoo fishing after the hurricane was one of the highlights with several fish hooked. 
PHOTO 7 : This is what wahoo teeth can do to a CD-18 Rapala after a single strike! This is Steve Button’s rapala after it was mauled by the sharp teeth of the wahoo in the photo above!
PHOTO 8: Orange Co, CA, John Berry of the Big Fish Electric Co. has already been here twice this year and just booked another trip for November. This bull dorado fell to a live sardine.
PHOTO 9: Look at the colors! This is the legendary pargo liso of Las Arenas. Tom Radoumi of UT is the angler and he put alot of meat in the cooler with this 30 pound hog. Everyone thinks that these big pargo are only around in the spring. We don’t catch many in the fall simply because most folks are out chasing tuna, dorado, billfish and wahoo outside. Inshore fishing during the fall can be outstanding!
PHOTO 10: Josh Thrasher brought his Oregon guys down for a few days and unfortunately, fishing was curtailed when we got slammed by the hurricane and fishing wasn’t exactly stellar immediately after the storm. However, they hung in there and did put some dorado fillets in the chest!
PHOTO 11: You have to admire the spirit of it all. Hurricane Henriette slammed into us early in the week. It was “only” a category 1 storm..mild by many standards but it did drop alot of rain and the wind blew like crazy knocking out power and flooding many areas. The hotel parking lot of La Concha Beach Resort and some of our anglers made the best of it…grabbed kayaks and broomsticks and with rain pelting down had a little kayak regatta!
PHOTO 12: Not many folks can say the went swimming during a hurricane, but Eric Engstrom’s guys from Northern CA organized a pick-up football game in the swimming pool with the seas going nutes behind them and rain coming down in sheets! 
PHOTO 13: Winds howled and rain fell. It wasn’t supposed to hit us but then it veered and jagged when it should and gone the other way and well…we were right in it’s path! Henriette was worse then we expected, but not as bad as it could have been. This photo was taken in the day during the middle of the storm when winds were 80 mph with gusts up to 100 and rain coming from all directions.
PHOTO 15: The hardest part of the storm was that so many fishing trips had to be canceled. Nothing to do but crack another beer and wish it would stop. Even in the middle of the blast, some of the guys attempted to get in a little pier fishing (and got bit!). Mind you…they are fishing when the world was crashing around them and 20 pound coconuts were falling from the trees above! To all the guys who were here this week and patiently kept smiling even when it was apparent they wouldn’t get to fish, you’re the best. We’ll grow the fish bigger when you come back!
THE FISHING REPORT
The photos pretty much tell the story, amigos. The week started with a bang. We were deep into the fish. Tuna all around Cerrlavo Island. Dorado scattered around and willing to eat just about everything. Billfish were biting everyday.
Then, a tropical storm that wasn’t supposed to hit us decided to pay a visit and that was that! Henrietta kicked in with 80 mph winds and a couple of days of rain. There was some flooding and damage about town but thankfully, it was not as bad as it could have been.
Nevertheless, it kept us all indoors twiddling our thumbs and bailing water for a few days not to mention cancel dozens of fishing trips scheduled this week.
When we did get back on the water , it was green, cloudy, colder and not very cooperative. Bait was harder to find. Fish were edgy and picky. Thankfully, the dorado around and north of La Paz got untracked within 2 days of the storm and fishing started to rip again albeit with mostly smaller fish. There were some nicer bulls taken and several billfish were also hooked.
For Las Arenas, hard times lingered. Bait that was normally caught around the island went deep and made it harder to fish. With minimal bait, it was harder to chum. The tuna are here ,but with no chum to bring them up , it was a scratch bite. Some tuna that were caught were of a better grade averging 20-40 pounds. A few dorado were taken, but nothing to write home about mostly except for some larger bulls. The nice surprise were the roosterfish that suddenly showed up off the beaches and willing to eat.
As long as the weather holds, I can only imagine that as we get further and further away from the storm, conditions will improve and we’ll be all over the fish again!
Have a great week! That’s my story!
Jonathan
Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter International
Phone: (626) 333-3355
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