PHOTO 1: Just another day on the beach. This was typical of catches thist past week with a good batch of fun football tuna and a smattering of breezing dorado. Jeff Sakuda and Marianne Sugawara from S. California come down 2 or 3 times a year and were worried they would not catch enough tuna. This rack of fish came in about 90 minutes of actual fishing! Las Arenas was red hot most of the week until Northern winds kicked in and shut things down late.
TUNA BITE IS EPIC AS RODS BEND AT LAS ARENAS WITH DORADO HIGHLIGHTS BUT NORTHERN WINDS LATE IN WEEK THREATEN TO TURN OFF BEST BITE OF THE YEAR!
La Paz / Las Arenas Fishing Report for Oct. 7, 2007
PHOTO 2: Zach Smith and Dave Deter strike the pose! Yellow”fun” tuna again took up residence in a spot just off the beach between the Arenas lighthouse and Punta Perrico. You had to be REALLY bad not to catch fish this past week. The fish would go like maddogs on the flylined sardines simply dropped over the side!
PHOTO 3: Pete Eby from Cleveland holds up his first-ever fish…a nice grade yellowfin tuna. You didn’t have to be a vet to land fish this week. The basic requirement was just don’t drop the rod into the water. These yellowfin would go on just about any boat tossed in the water and best of all, the fish were literally only about 100 yards from shore!
PHOTO 4: Speaking of veterans, two San Diegans, Don Melucci and Mike Foster come down every year. Their first day, they got hit by the tuna as well. Here they are standing on Las Arenas beach with the first day catch. If you had a bait in the water, you were bit. Most of the fish were football sized yellowfin between 10 and 20 pounds this week.

PHOTO: 5: Vern Maxwell from Pittsburgh PA holds up his first ocean fish. It’s a bull dorado. Fluries of dorado would often jet through the tuna schools and were a highlight of the good tuna fishing with most boats getting a shot at dorado without having to move off the tuna honey-hole!
PHOTO 6 : John Pastorello of Fullerton CA surveys some of his dorado catch taken on the La Paz side. Dorado continued to be the general catch for our La Paz fleet, but there were also some wahoo taken again as well as striped marlin, blue marlin and sailfish. The dorado this year are not nearly as big as the toads we got last year but the fish are still a fun 10-30 pounds on the average with lots of smaller ones surprisingly still around.
PHOTO 7: Even THIS guy can catch fish sometimes! They let all kinds of crazy people on the beach when the fish are biting.
PHOTO 8 : Frequent La Paz angler, Eric Zimbler holds up one of the larger tuna caught this week of about 25 pounds.
THE FISH REPORT
I am sure this is sounding like a broken record, but the tuna this past week was awfully good again! I mean…limits in an hour if you found the spot. Boats were sometimes done by 10 a.m. and were out of bait or had to go find some other species of fish to molest!
The hot spot again was Las Arenas along the shallow ridge right off the beach between the Arenas lighthouse and Punta Perrico. The best bite was near Perrico where sardines and no weight did the trick and tuna foamed and rods bent!
Fortunately, without much effort, most boats also had shots at dorado as well. Often flurries of other species would shoot through the tuna and anglers found themselves surrounded by dorado or the occasional billfish that went wolfing down all the chum in the water then suddenly found itself hooked up.
Along the beaches, plenty of activity as well. Roosters and jacks were great fun on the light tackle and for the flyfishers who could be seen bent and rods screaming up along the rocks and beaches.
For our La Paz boats, steady if not spectacular action. Dorado were again the mainstay and most boats took 4-7 mahi/day. Nothing banner but strong steady action most days with the chance to go ballistic if you hit the right spot at the right time. Everyone goes home with fish!
Side note…as I write this, the northern winds have arrived. Usually, this heralds the change of season. Summer is over and we start to transition to cooler waters and temps. The northerns were strong enough to keep us off the water today with dangerous condtions. Hopefully, this is just a little blow and not a long consistent wind. We’ll keep you posted. If it blows all week, water and air temps will surely drop and fishing very likely changes.
That’s my story!
Jonathan
Tailhunter International
Phone: (626) 333-3355
FAX: (626) 333-0115
U.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
Mexico Office: Carr. a Pichilingue KM 5, Numero 205, La Paz, Baja Cal Sur, Mexico
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