PHOTO 1 : Dog tooth pargo trophy! Chip Wickline was fishing with 30 pound test just off the Las Arenas lighthouse with Captain Archangel and looky what he caught! This massive dog-tooth snapper (pargo) also called a cubera snapper or pargo perro. Estimated at 50-70 pounds this huge guy tore into a chunk of bait. Most folks think that the spring is a good time for the pargo, but although it’s true we get the most fish during that time, we got the biggest ones in the fall.
HURRICANE NORBERT HALTS FISHING LATE IN THE WEEK BUT DOES LITTLE DAMAGE BUT BEFORE THAT BIG SQUID AND DORADO SCHOOLS KEEP ANGLERS HAPPY!
La Paz / Las Arenas Fishing Report for the Week of Oct. 5-11, 2009
PHOTO 2: Wade Gomes and Bill Moore from northern California area hold up two of the dorado they got fishing a day out of Las Arenas sch
PHOTO 3: One of the larger bulls that day, first timer Keith Kleppe hooked this guy working the dorado schools that have taken up residence between the Las Arenas lighthouse and Boca de Alamo. 
PHOTO 4: Now appearing on “air dorado” playing “Rock You Like A Hurricane”, Joe Burkhart holds up an ice bull dorado taken south of Muertos Bay.
PHOTO 5: Dave Wakaybayshi’s guys from Southern California all hold up a nice quiver of dorado after a day of fishing at Las Arenas.
PHOTO 6: I teased Paul Dubow that he was holding his big roosterfish like a “loaf of bread” with an assist from Captain Gerardo, but he said, “When you’re 75-years-old you can’t be blamed for holding a big fish like that! Great catch from Paul. It was his first and he released it. The big roosters are still around this late in the season!
PHOTO 7: Captain Moncho (Raymond) poses with Ed “Sunny” De La Torre who spent 3 days flyfishing with us on his first trip down. He admitted he was a rookie on the flyrod but got numerous pompano, his first rooster and well as dorado on the flyrod and had a great time. 
PHOTO 8: Willy Domingo from San Jose CA was trolling a plastic hoochie on the surface with 30 pound test line. No wire. When this wahoo bit, not 50 feet from the shore! As it was being fought, another wahoo twice the size swam around the boat eating chunked squid, but nothing with a hook. The wahoo was a great surprise. Sed Roldan of Hacienda Heights CA, cradles his prized barred pargo he caught on a piece of squid off the Las Arenas lighthouse.
PHOTO 9: Kevin Lang and George Nichols show off two of their dorado caught flylining baits south or Muertos Bay SE of La Paz.
PHOTO 10: Here’s the fish that made Las Arenas famous being held by Chris Blair and one of the best rooster captains in our fleet and in the area, Captain Archangel. This beauty was released to grow larger, but fish like this are still prowling the sandy shallows near the lighthouse!
PHOTO 11: Another solid beauty of a roosterfish! Rod Brown from Alaska visits us each year and loves fishing with Captain Jorge, for obvious reasons. Check out the rooster. Las Arenas is considered the “roosterfish capital of the world.” This fish was released. 
PHOTO 12: Look carefully. I’ve never seen it photographed before and it’s a shame I can’t make the photo larger, but there’s about a dozen dorado in the water boiling on bait in a feeding frenzy! Get them going like this and it could be non-stop high-flying action for hours!
PHOTO 13: On the left Paul Scheuring from Mill Valley. Middle is Mike Ting from Redwood Shores. On the right is Fernando Sucre also from Redwood City. Showing of a brace of dorado headed to the hotel kitchen for a cook out. The guys caught these dorado north of La Paz
PHOTO 14: Don’t go in the water! This is the beak of one of these aggressive hungry giant squid. Easily snap off a finger or when groups get together tear apart fish and yes…even people! These hunters are canibalistic and even eat each other! This beak is what is in the middle of all those tentacles!
VIDEO OF THE WEEK:
An exciting week here for sure. Let me set the scene. We pretty much figured hurricane season was over. It’s already pretty late in the season. Things had been going really well. Cooler temps on the water and air pretty much signal the end of storms. Well, about mid-week, all of a sudden, we get notices that Hurricane Norbert might be headed our way and it was gonna be a BIG ONE! We couldn’t be sure of how strong it would be or even if it would hit us directly. Day-by-day, it was stronger-weaker-stronger. It was going to hit us directly, then move north, then come our way again. It was the most erratic storm I have seen. At one time, it was up to a Category 4 hurricane which is almost the strongest!
People spent the week here alternately sandbagging, taping windows, moving furniture, building berms, and stocking up on flashlights and water and gas. For us as a fleet, we had to continuously juggle the fishermen to get them where waters were safer as winds would rip, then die, then rip again.
Anyway, it finally hit us Saturday. Oh wow…that’s about all I can say. It was ALOT of wind and that was about it. Like a big FART of a hurricane! It had to be the dryest hurricane I have ever seen. Don’t get me wrong, I was thankful, but after all the preparation and anticipation, it turned out to be just severe enough that we had to cancel a lot of fishing trips and a lot of our fishermen headed home had their flights canceled. So, everyone drank beer and watched the baseball playoffs. I have officially re-named Hurricane NORBERT, Hurricane INCONVENIENCE!
As for the fishing…well, those big squid off Muertos continued to be huge and hungry so that’s how we started most days off Las Arenas. Trolling the squid strips for dorado usually produced a flurry or two and enough dorado in the 8-20 pound class to keep folks happy most days. (Check out the photo above). Still not a lot of big bulls. This late in the season, we should have more bulls in the 30, 40, 50 pound class, but right now, a 25 pounder would be a trophy.
Big roosters are still around as you can tell by the photos. It’s late in the season, but the big boys are still hanging.
Marlin and sailfish are also around. Most of them are being caught right where the dorado schools are biting. Not surprisingly, they are eating the smaller dorado and baitfish.
We did have some really interesting things happen. Our amigo, Bruce Peterson, from South Dakota, dropped his big squid jig down and as it sank below the boat in the clear blue water, not 10 feet below the boat, a big striped marlin bolts out and inhales the squid jig all the way down it’s gullet (Squid jigs the new hot marlin lure?) Anyway…fish on! Fight on! The got the fish to the boat and the marlin had completely inhaled the the lure down it’s throat, but was still able to be extracted and released.
Roy Cordes (we want to adopt him as our ex-officio grandfather) got into a wild dorado bite where a dorado leaped into the boat and bit him in the toe, then jumped back out! FISH ATTACKS MAN!
I was on the water myself a few days this week and the squid bite was incredible. These are 60-80 pound beasts! I would NOT want to get into the water with these. They were not only hard to pull up, but if you took too long, you could actually see the other squid tear the hooked squid apart. No mercy. After all your work, you’d come up with just a head and some tentacles!
I don’t know what this storm will have done to the water and fishing conditions so we can only guess. But often, it washes a lot of debris into the water that becomes a haven for baitfish and ergo, the sportfish! We’ll keep you posted.
That’s our story!
Jonathan
Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter Fish Report 
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