It was a great week for larger tuna and one of the best shots and stories of the week. Jared DiFiore (16) and his brother Joseph (14) came to La Paz from New Hampshire with their family hoping to catch "just one fish.. .any kind of a fish!" They had never done this before. Their first day they fished with our Tailhunter La Paz fleet and got a limit of dorado and were thrilled. The next day, they went snorkeling and ended up swimming with sealions, a whaleshark and saw porpoise a blue whale and sea turles. Then, they decided to try the big tuna at Las Arenas. They figured they were finally up to going to the big leagues. They tied into this big ahi yellowfin tuna and tag-teamed it for almost 2 hours before getting it to the boat. That was it! No more. They asked the captain to take them back to the beach with big smiles!
Happy boy "Modelo" Dave Pollard from Upland CA holds up a fat yellowfin tuna he caught with our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet. Dave "grand slammed"...actually he did better than that nailing tuna, dorado, marlin and pargo all on the same day.
A graduation present for 17 year-old Mike Harkins who also works as a deckhand on a Los Angeles sportboat. He's been fishing with us since he was about 2 feet high and always had a knack for big fish. Over 4 days, he got yellowfin tuna, yellowtail, dorado and this big pargo and several others fishing with his dad and using live bait with our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet. It's been a surprsing few weeks with cold water fish like pargo and yellowtail still around.
A long way to the ocean from New Mexico, but Steve Hanson (who invented the "Steve-O-rita" while he was here...Red Bull and silver tequila!) fished with his son, Darren, (holding the tail) and our Tailhunter La Paz fleet and got this blue marlin estimated at 300 pounds. The meat was donated. They also got limits of dorado. It was a good week for both species.
Dave and Mike Van Velzer had a spectacular week after fishing 4 days with both of our Tailhunter fleets. They got a variety of dorado and some of the big yellowfin tuna like the ones they are holding here at Punta Arenas Beach.
It was a good week for the youngsters! Steve Kechichian is 16-years-old and pulled on numerous big tuna and dorado like this one he caught with Captain Victor. His best stories from Steve and his dad were the numerous multi-hookups they had and couldn't stop the fish or the fish going in two different directions and unable to chase them down.
Recently retired Greg Covello (left) knew exactly what he wanted to do with his free time...catch a big pargo so he came down with amigo, Alex Bastedo. They lost alot of fish ,but did manage to pull these two trophy pargo lisos out of the rocks.
It was a pretty good week for marlin! Captain Pancho helps our amigo, Tony Adamich with this nice striper caught near Cerralvo Island. Tony released the fish that day.
After you fight a big tuna for almost 2 hours, it's not so easy to lift it up when someone wants to take your picture! Mike McCort from New York did his best and we got the photo. These fish showed a big preference for big chunks of fresh squid for bait on huge 7/0 to 9/0 hooks!
This is just one more example of our screwy season! Normally, we see yellowtail in the cooler months and cooler waters of February to May. But it's JULY!! Alex Bastedo holds up a 10 pounder, but we got some in the 30-40 pound class this week that surprised everyone!
He really wanted to try to get a tuna on a flyrod, but Professor Mark Marcus from Knoxville, Tenn., put down the flyrod when he saw the sizes of the yellowfin tuna that showed up this week.
Varton Bagdasaryan is a professional chef in the Riverside area of California and was on his first trip to fish in La Paz waters. His first two fish of the day were a striped marlin and this big tuna. He immediately went back to the hotel and mixed up some sashime! This fish bit a big chunk of fresh squid off Las Arenas.
He came all the way from Florida and ended up tangling with one of our big tuna this week. Professor Llew Williams has been fishing with us for many many years and it's always great to have him down.
BIG TUNA GIANT SQUID HUNGRY DORADO PACE THE WEEK OF FISHING!
La Paz/ Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of July 18-25, 2010
Nothing else to describe it other than a solid week of fishing. Some really incredible fishing for some of our anglers who hit some monster fish and literally filled their coolers their first day then after it was gravy! Seriously…especially for our Las Arenas fleet, big tuna showed up in the 40-80 pound class that bent anglers for 1-2 hours each.
If you looked at the scores, some days, it might look like we didn’t do that well on the tuna, but if you talked to the anglers, they’ll tell you they fought and LOST 2, 3 or more fish and only got 1 to the boat. Totally spent and thrashed anglers and captains came back with stories of fish fought for as much as 3 hours and losing them and some speculation that some of the larger gorilla tuna were in the 100-200 pound class.
On several occasions, anglers fought a single fish for an hour or two and then told the captain, “No mas, take me back to the beach!” They came back and just sat and collapsed. And it was still morning!
As one angler said, “We got one fish on 60 pound test and the trolling rod and 4/0 two-speed reel. We almost got spooled on the first run and we fired up the panga! It was like being a cowboy trying to stand up and ride a panga over the waves and hang onto the tuna. We went almost FULL speed for 20 minutes chasing the fish and it finally popped! We never even saw it, but there were some other hugs boils in the area that looked like they were half the size of the 22 foot panga!”
No way to know if the tuna will hang out, but the key seems to be the giant squid in the morning. If the squid show up and the anglers can put some in the boat, these giant squid are as big as 60 pounds and a true workout right off the bat to grind them up from the deep.
Then, using heavy rigs and 7/0 and larger hooks we pin a 3 pound chunk on the hook and send it back down! Guys were telling us that just catching the squid was hard enough. “Man, each squid was a battle to get them to the surface. These were sea monsters and even before we started fishing, we were already tuckered out and looking in the ice chest for cold beers and it wasn’t even 8 a.m. yet!”
“The bite at times was almost instant!” said another of our anglers. “Literally, within seconds of drifting that chunk down, it was like a car came by and suddenly latched on! I’ve never had line spin off my reel so fast. Then it was like I was holding a refrigerator over the side of a building or something! I immediately started wishing these were smaller tuna!” He lost 5 fish before he boated his first tuna but ended up with 3 fish over 2 days with the smallest being 65 pounds.
Now…add to that a good smattering of dorado from 5-40 pounds; marlin; roosterfish and big pargo and our Las Arenas anglers really had a super week. But…hold on…
We also got yellowtail! These are fish that are COLD water fish and we generally catch them only in February to May. Several of our fishermen got into 10-40 pound mossback yellowtail! Go figure.
For our La Paz fleet, they were hanging fish all week as well. With great weather, the dorado came to play. Most days, the boats got limits or near limits of dorado up to about 30 pounds with most fish in the 10-20 pound class. As well, several boats got into nice marlin including one 300 pound blue landed by Steve Hanson of New Mexico.
It’s been a screwy year, but this has certainly been one of the better weeks of the season!
That’s our story!
Jonathan and Jilly
Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter International
Website: www.tailhunter-international.com
U.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Drive, Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
Mexico Office: 755 Paseo Obregon, La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico
Phones:
from USA : 626-638-3383
from Mexico: 044-612-14-17863
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Tailhunter Weekly Fishing Report:
http://www.tailhunter-international.com/fishreport.htm
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Tailhunter Fish Report 