Huge dorado almost looks pre-historic! Scott McKenzie was on his 2nd trip with us this year and was rewarded by this monster bull dorado he caught fishing with Captain Pancho and our Tailhunter Las Arena fleet. For Scott, it was his largest dorado and he had just been here 3 weeks ago with his sisters, but came back on this trip with his buddies. The dorado fishing prior to the storms was pretty steady!
What a week! This is a photo of the malecon…the waterfront road at the heart of La Paz under several feet of water after a week of suffering a partial hurricane then a tropical storm!
Huge sinkholes and potholes often were not evident under the rushing waters until someone tried to drive through them. Several times drivers and passengers had to be rescued and fortunately, no one was killed. During the final storm of Tropical Storm Norman, more than 12 inches of rain fell in 16 hours.
There’s a 4 lane highway under here someplace! One sign pointing south to Cabo about 100 miles away just on the edge of La Paz that got almost a week of heavy rains.
Good amigo, Tom Hinmon, from the Los Angeles area, shows off one of the larger bull dorado of the week he caught with our Las Arenas fleet. Unfortunately, Tom and his amigos had to cancel their 3rd day of fishing when rain washed out roads to Las Arenas.
Derrick Tagawa and Mark Kojima teamed up for a nice day of dorado and a striped marlin fishing near Cerralvo Island. It was unfortunate that our two amigos only had two days of fishing
Chris Lynch and Pat Stoll started 3 days of fishing on a high note with a good day of dorado fishing with our Las Arenas fleet. Things went downhill from there as the rains started up that night. But the guys, to their credit, kept up the smiles and good spirits as did many of our disappointed anglers.
On his 2nd trip with us this year, Frank Vargas, came down from Seattle to enjoy some sunshine and fishing and on his 1st of 3 days of fishing started off with some great dorado fishing including this nice bull dorado.
Two of our best fish brothers from the Pacific Northwest, Rod maker Bob Solee for B & B rods in Portland and Grant Darby from Washington have fished with us so many times over all the years and never stop smiling. They started 3 days fishing with some nice dorado and Grant’s nice fat barred pargo!
Not bad for a first timer…Misty Rogers gets a hand from husband, Justin, and Captain Archangel on her big sailfish. The couple is from Idaho and were on their first visit to La Paz. Note the dark skies of the impending storms that hit soon after.
From the Sacramento CA area, Ron and Yvette Straub, had one of their better fishing trips with us showing off their first day on the water of 3. Nice bite of dorado on the beach at Bahia de Los Muertos.
Nick Keshish, Tom Moon, Robert and Bob Connell pose at Muertos Bay with some of their first day dorado.
Our amigo, Wade Gomes, from Sacramento has been with us many times and had many good trips, but really got snakebit the first 2 days with us. However, they kept at it and worked hard and hung in there and on day 3, finally found a willing school of nice dorado they they nailed while fishing with brother Greg Gomes. They were fishing north of La Paz near Espirito Santo Island
Steve and Kevin Resky started off well with a nice day of dorado and a lost pargo, but then rains hit and lost 2 days of fishing when the storm hit. These fish were caught with our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet.
There’s still roosterfish around and we got a few this week for folks who wanted to get one off their bucket list. Justin Rogers from Idaho shows off his rooster before releasing it.
Wayne Wellsandt and Curt Desjardins fishing with our Las Arenas fleet and their family pulled in some nice dorado when the fish went off early in the week.
CRAZY WEEK WITH A HURRICANE AN EARTHQUAKE THEN ANOTHER STORM WITH DORADO BITING EARLY
La Paz- Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Sept. 23-30, 2012
It was one of the strangest weeks ever in years. It was certainly one for the record books. In a week, we got sideswiped by Hurricane Miriam. We got hit by a 6.2 earthquake. And we got a Tropical Storm Norman that dropped 12 inches of rain on us in less than 24 hours! It was a crazy week.
We technically didn’t take the hurricane on the nose, but it brushed us and dropped several heavy afternoons of rain with thunder and lightning. (We were still able to fish each day as the storms did not hit until late in the afternoon!). However, it was during one of these big thundershowers on Tuesday that one giant “thunderclap” didn’t stop. Thinks kept rumbling and then things started falling off the wall. The floor started jumping and walls bending and we realized EARTHQUAKE! Our staff went flying out the door into the rain as our Tailhunter offices and restaurant are in a 3 story concrete building that’s 100 years old! Not the funnest place to be when things are shaking!
Anyway, no real damage. No one hurt. More laughs when it was over than anything else but quakes are so unusual here, let alone one during a rainstorm that we were all scratching our heads as we stood in the rain!
Then, late in the week as Hurricane Miriam was just leaving us, Tropical Storm Norman crashed into us dropping as much as 12 inches of rain in about 18 hours and truly flooding the city. Cars were stranded in the deep waters. People were stranded from getting to their homes and jobs as streets flooded. It was like a hurricane without the 50 mph winds!
For the first time in 3 years, we had to cancel pangas to the disappointment of many of us, but the roads to Las Arenas become too flooded and muddy with water-filled arroyos to go out and for our La Paz fleet, the port captain closed down the port re-calling all boats or preventing watercraft from leaving. Real disappointing 2 days.
We’ve gotten more rain in 3 weeks than we’ve had in 3 years. In fact, we’ve pretty much had zero rain here in La Paz in 3 years and were in a drought situation. This is also the first time in 3 years we’ve canceled pangas due to the weather. What a week!
More specifically for the fishing…
Early in the week with hurricane Miriam dropping afternoon rains on us, we were still able to fish and were doing quite well for the most part. Not great fishing ,but we were still catching. Dorado were the main hitters and our Las Arenas fleet was more on target than our La Paz fleet. Again, just like the week before, there were some low spots where some boats found the fish and others virtually right next to them struggled. But dorado in the 15-20 pound class were the norm with some larger fish up to 45 pounds.
As mentioned, I think this past week, our Las Arenas fleet had the edge with not only better dorado action, but also more variety. In terms of species, we had dorado, sailfish, striped marlin, pargo, blue bonito, pacific bonito, jack crevalle, and a few stray yellowfin tuna and a wahoo. But, what was really exciting was that for the first time in 2 years the giant squid came up. These were the nice 30 pounders and they came up out’ve the trench in front of the old Hotel Las Arenas. I was especially excited because usually within a few days of squid coming up from the deep, the yellowfin tuna also come up. But then the storm hit and we had 2 days of canceled trips. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this we’ll have some tuna in the counts.
La Paz fishing continued to produce dorado as well, but not as well as we’ve been doing the past few months. Colder greener water was the problem and it appears that waters might indeed be getting colder sooner than expected. We started catching sierra mixed with the dorado which usually don’t show up until it gets cooler in late November. Sierra are always an indicator of the colder water.
Hopefully, now that the storms have passed and not a cloud in the forecast, there will be lots of debris in the water which becomes perfect habitat for dorado. Maybe we can make up this week for having to cancel a few days of fishing this past week!
That’s our story
Jonathan and Jill
Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter International Website: www.tailhunter-international.com Mexico Office: Tailhunter International, 755 Paseo Obregon, La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico
U.S. Mailing Address: Tailhunter International, P.O. Box 1149, Alpine CA 91903-1149
Phones: from USA : 626-638-3383 from Mexico: 044-612-14-17863
.
Tailhunter Weekly Fishing Report: http://www.tailhunter-international.com/fishreport.htm
Tailhunter YouTube Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/pangapirate
“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”
Tailhunter Fish Report 