Retired fire captain, Jesse Franco, shows off one of the type of yellowfin tuna typical of what we were catching this week off Las Arenas. The bite seemed to have suffered this past week during the full moon. Fish averaged about 20-35 pounds most days. Jess got this one on live bait just off from Punta Arenas.
It would seem to be too warm for amberjack, but several large ones were hooked this week. Amberjack are the good eating big boy cousins to yellowtail and we normally see them around late spring and early summer when conditions are cooler. However, Fabio Caldron was fishing with our amigo, Hawk Davis off Cerralvo Island when he roped this big beast estimated at 50-60 pounds or larger!
Lisa Ogle...first timer on the ocean...from Oregon probably caught the largest tuna of the week...estimated at 70 pounds by our Captain Victor. She just didn't have a camera to take a photo of it! So, you get her 2nd best tuna! We enjoy showing- off the ladies and especially when they're first timers! She and her husband Brian, a hunting guide, also got into a big day of dorado.
Dean Francoeur and Jeff Lipp hold up a couple of their yellowfin at Las Arenas. Some of the problem with the tuna may have been the difficulty in catching bait. Some days the fish bit early and other days, the tuna waiting until the last minute to bite. Dean's fish went 27 pounds on the scale.
More like it. Greg Marsalla took one of our super pangas north outta La Paz as he only had one day to fish and probably had one of the better days this week with three of them on the boat taking some quality dorado.
John "JD" Drucker makes it down every year to visit us...sometimes twice a year...when he can get away from work and always does pretty well on the fishing. He's holding one of his Las Arenas yellowfin tuna here on the beach.
Jeff Sweet fished with first-timer Greg Landerer and got 4 nice yellowfin tuna for their efforts their first day. Largest fish was 24 pounds.
Our buddy from Washington, Mike Whitlow, celebrating his birthday for an entire week in Mexico, posted up with this quality yellowfin tuna he caught fishing with Captain Adolfo.
VIDEO CLIPS OF THE WEEK!!
Sorry…no video clips this week. FUMBLE FINGERS ME…I dropped my video cam in the water! What a doofus. I was taking some shots and had removed the waterproof housing so that I could get better audio. It slipped out’ve my hands. It’s fried. First time in all these years here that I’ve ever dropped a camera in the water. Of course, it happens to be the ONLY camera I have that is NOT waterproof.
FULL MOON MAKES FOR A STICKY BITE BUT TUNA AND DORADO STILL ACTIVE…SORT OF…!
La Paz/ Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Sept. 11-18, 2011
Some great photos this week and if you just looked at the photos, you might be inclined to say that we had a pretty nifty week of fishing. But….hold on…in all honesty….There was a noticeable drop off in the good tuna bite that went off last week off Punta Arenas and South Cerralvo Island.
Not sure if it was the full moon or the scarcity of bait, but things were definitely off. Our pangas averaged only 1-4 tuna in the 20-30 pound class although we did hit a fewer in the 40-60 pound class. They were few and far between. Compared to last week when 5-10 tuna in the 40-50 pound class was more the norm.
But everywhere this week the bite seemed to have dropped off…even for our La Paz fleet. Everyone got fish but it was more of a picky bite. Excluding what you may or may not believe about a full-moon affecting things, conditions seemed good except for one thing…the bait! It was harder to get.
For our Las Arenas fleet, our normally good sardine areas held few or only tiny sardines which meant some days we had to jig for caballitos. Or, we had to go way up the east side of Cerralvo Island to find sufficient sardine supplies. For our La Paz fleet it was also a struggle to get bait. We got the bait, but some days it took alot longer to get enough to head out.
Still, we did get some good dorado this week with our La Paz fleet doing better than our Las Arenas fleet. But it could be like pulling teeth at times. Imagine some of your favorite captains…all stars like Chito, Raul, Boli, Pancho, Jorge, Victor… and others getting only 1 or 2 fish! That’s unheard of! Wow! But then the boat right next to a hot boat could get 10 fish! Crazy.
Some good roosterfishing, sailfish and marlin bites too. Will see what happens as we move away from this full moon.
That’s our story!
Jonathan and Jill
Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter International
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