La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Report from Tailhunter Sportfishing for Week of Aug. 16-23, 2015

August 24, 2015 by riplipboy

Well…YES! As a matter of fact we DO have yellowtail. Only problem is that they’re NOT supposed to be here. Our waters are about 90 degrees right now! We get our yellowtail in the winter and spring when the waters are COLD! Never in August! Our amigo Esteban Romero hooked 3. Two got unbuttoned, but he put this 30-pound class slug into the panga using a live mackerel fished down deep! Also, something we never have to do is fish deep!

His first trip to La Paz turned out to be banner for Kit Luu of Monterey Park CA. He got his first roosterfish. He caught dorado. And, while he was jigging a Mega Bait, he hooked onto this nice wahoo…his first! Captain Victor looks on!

Another of our anglers on his first trip to visit us, Jason Christofferson from Las Vegas was with Captain Pancho when he latched into this trophy roosterfish off Las Arenas. Great photo and the fish was released.

Happy Birthday to Ken Chau! Ken is from Rosemead CA and on his birthday, he shows off a few of his fish…a nice dorado and one of the fat bonito we’ve got north of La Paz.

San Francisco in the house. Paul Nagata is our good amigo who has been visiting us for years put the hurt on a nice rooster fishing with our popular Captain Jorge. The fish was released.

Big fat rooster! Vong Mekdara from Monterey Park CA went out with rain clouds threatening from Bahia de los Muertos with our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet and hauled in this huge rooster! The big guy was released.

The dorado are finally getting a bit bigger! Three weeks ago, this would’ve been the biggest dorado of the week! Kit Luu and Kerry Lam put a number of dorado into the boat fishing out’ve La Paz.

Scott Harvey from Del Mar CA brought his son, Andrew, down for the week to do some fishing and got into the fish himself including this roosterfish he was able to photo and let swim away strong!

It has been a good year for billfish this year, especially with so many bonito and small dorado in the areas serving as food. This is a photo of Paul Nagata’s sailfish as it was being released after a good battle. Paul was fishing north of La Paz Bay.

STEADY FISHING MIXED WITH AFTERNOON THUNDERSHOWERS!

La Paz – Las Arenas/Muertos Bay Fishing Report for Week of Aug. 16-23, 2015

The week was a typical August kind of fishing week for us! Everyone caught fish and most of it was dorado which is about right for this time of year. Also, it was a week of tropical thunderstorms. No hurricanes, but afternoon showers that would bring torrential rains (usually after everyone was done fishing…but sometimes not) that flooded streets in a flash but then quickly ran off and the sun came blazing out again. Those of our fishermen that occasionally got caught out there told us they got drenched, but it was warm “like a shower.” Or, they could see the columns of rain falling straight down from the sky and simply drove around it. It would rain hard in one spot, but a mile away barely a drizzle! There were some pretty spectacular thunder and lightning shows, however, and the thunder was like “being inside of a trash can and kids whacking it with baseball bats,” said another of our anglers. This coming week, however, shows no rain in sight.

LAS ARENAS/ BAHIA de LOS MUERTOS

This has been our “grab bag” area all season. Just crazy fishing. Never know what you’re gonna catch! About the ONLY consistent biter all season has been big rooster fish. And these are all 30-50 pound fish! Many of our anglers are getting their “first-ever” rooster fish and all of them have been trophy-sized fish. There have even been larger fish, but they’ve busted off with estimates of fish going up to 90 pounds breaking off.

The bad thing is that roosters are bad eating. They don’t help bring any fillets home in the ice chests! The good thing is that all the roosters are getting released.

Pretty much, if you didn’t get a rooster, there wasn’t much else and that’s too bad because traditionally the Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay area has been a big old fish trap for all kinds of species and action. So, beyond catching roosters, that was it. We’d have our clients fishing in La Paz where there was alot more action.

However, this past week, we got some welcome surprises. The biggest was that we caught some yellowtail in the deep water right of the Las Arenas lighthouse. One of those rare occasions when you put on some weight and dropped a live or dead mackerel down 80-200 feet! (Like fishing in Loreto where the yellowtail hunker down deep!) . But the mackerel were the key. Guys were scouring the stores in La Paz looking for mackies! Frozen worked just fine. The real surprise is that yellowtail are cold water fish! We get them in the cold water months of February to May. In 20 years here, I’ve not ever seen any yellowtail caught in the summer! No one is complaining, however. These fish have been legit 20-30 pounders!

The other surprise is finding out there’s still wahoo in the area. We hooked and dropped a few this week and put a few in the tank as well. After the phenomenal May and June wahoo bonanza we had this year, it just shut off after that. So, good to know the speedy fish are still around. Good-sized 20-30 pounders all on jigs or slow-trolled Rapalas!

LA PAZ

Dorado dorado dorado! We’ve had them since springtime, but they’ve been so dinky, it’s ridiculous. But, they’ve bee a blessing because they’ve provided so much action. But, just way smaller than what we should have been getting. I mean, seriously…if you want to catch 12-inch dorado, there are some spots where you can park the panga all day and have a blast on light tackle catching-and-releasing as fast as you can go.

Slowly, however, the fish have gotten bigger. Just not very fast. This past week, better quality 15-30 pounders started showing up to the point where the fishermen were tossing back smaller fish. With the afternoon rains popping up, on some days, it was nice to get a limit of fish and be back to town by noon or 1 with a good load of fillets for the cooler.

For other species, still big bonito around…some smaller rooster fish…and we did get a few marlin and sailfish hooked and released this week.

A LITTLE WET

As I said at the beginning, we have some occasional thundershowers lately. I rains…it floods…then it dries up! Fairly typical sometimes. We call them “toritos” (little bulls) that roll in and quickly roll out. But the flash flooding can be dramatic. Thanks to Clima La Paz for the photos. Take a look. If you’ve been to La Paz, you might recognize some of the photos. (Like the malecon!)