La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Report from Tailhunter Sportfishing for Week of May 1-8, 2016

May 9, 2016 by riplipboy

Lifting 2 Yellowtail Marcus Yoo 5-16 tags

Marcus Yoo got a break from his duties with the U.S. Army in Salt Lake City in between overseas deployments and raced down to La Paz on a last-minute fishing trip with only one day to get in some fishing. He made the most of it with some amberjack, small dorado and these huge double-fisted yellowtail from La Paz Bay.

Giant pargo liso (mullet snapper) pulled out’ve the rocks by Jacinto Garcia from Mexicali with Tailhunters’ Captain Victor running the panga. Jacinto’s amigo, Miles Reiter from Monterey CA, battled a huge tuna over two hours before it wrapped around some buoy and busted off!

Two of our flyfishers from this week, Rene Paul and Bruce Merighi from Washington on a double hook up with their flyrods got to pull on some bonito, but roosters remained elusive and the guys worked hard all week.

Two more of our flyfishers who were down for the first time testing the waters, Steve Pratt and Paul Anderson who owns a flyshop up there on the Hood River of Oregon in the Dalles put alot of effort into their sport this week. This beautiful palomita, a member of the jack family, was one result . Great colorful photo too!

Captain Armando with out Tailhunter Fleet there at Bahia de los Muertos had the hot hand for several days and putting our guys onto the big yellowtail. Here, he’s on the beach with Gerardo Orozco and Francisco Lopez and one of their two big ‘tails!

yellowtail Kevin Hohn San Antonio tags 5-16

Texas in the house! Kevin Hohn of San Antonio took this beauty on a blue and white iron!

She’s great fun to have visit us this past week! Laura Page puts a serious bend into her flyrod and was able to get several different species to the boat. Laura and her husband are from the Denver area.

roosterfish william kelly adolfo 5-16 tags

Young 12-year-old William Kelly from Laguna Beach came to La Paz for the first time and fishing with Tailhunter’s Captain Adolfo put the hurt on this beautiful rooster fish just outside south of Bahia de los Muertos close to shore. The fish was released!

Ernie Loya Jorge Ramirez Lorenzo 5-16 tags

That’s captain Lorenzo back there, not trying to cover his identity, but wearing a sunshade mask posing with Ernie Loya and Jorge Ramirez with two of their big yellowtail caught this week.

Like all of our flyfishers this week, Tom Page, from Denver worked really hard at his craft and he kept smiling especially after finally working this tough bonito to the boat.

Potential world record tasted pretty good at Tailhunter Restaurant with chimichurri sauce on it. This hawkfish(china maru) caught by Dave Schneider yesterday of San Jose and held here by buddy Dan Moreno looked suspiciously large. Most that I see are about 3-5 pounds. The guys were fishing with our Captain Pancho and brought the fish for us to cook up. I went downstairs to our office to check the record books. Turns out the IGFA record is 9.7 pounds. We estimate this fish might have been 12 pounds! Dan is about 6’2″ and 250. The guys were just cleaning their plates up! I think this is the 4th potential world record in 3 years that ended up tasting pretty good!

First time visitor from San Diego area, Dave Houshar caught and released a pretty pez gallo out of Bahia de los Muertos. Captain Jorge helps out .

Greg’s a happy fella with this nice jack crevalle that he toughed to the boat. Big schools of feisty jacks have moved into the area to provide some great sport.

Ian Hudson from Hollister CA has a big dog roosterfish in his hands estimated at more than 50 pounds that doesn’t want it’s picture taken before he gets released. That’s Punta Arena in the background.

amberjack donna thompson dana hohn texas 5-16 tags

One of our favorite amigas, Donna Thompson and her daughter Dana Hohn from Texas hold onto a chunky amberjack the hooked fishing blue and white yo-yo irons.

That’s gonna make someone a good dinner! Alfie Adams holds up a colorful barred pargo (pargo mulatto) on the beach at Bahia de los Muertos.

Dave Houshar and Captain Jorge give the thumbs up to another amberjack which started biting nicely this week.

WEEK of SURPRISES

La Paz- Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Reports for Week of May 1-8, 2016

What had another few “jags” pop up in this already-quirky season of fishing. Just when I figured waters had gotten too warm and the “cold water” fishing was done, nature proved me wrong and some species we had not seen in several weeks like big pargo and especially big yellowtail surprised all of us with some serious bent-rod action plus continued decent biters on rooster fish and other species.

LA PAZ

For the past few weeks, this has been a good fall-back area for us to fish. There’s a spot across La Paz Bay on the way to San Juan de la Costa that has held a nice little honey hole of smaller dorado. Nothing, but but worth a late-morning or early afternoon of good action of fish 5-10 pounds with limits not uncommon. There had been very little else going on although the conditions really have looked good.

However, this past week, our anglers hit into some cabrilla and pargo, amberjack and roosters to give up a little more variety, but the big surprise was some really big-shouldered yellowtail that I thought were long gone. These 30-40 pound fish were slugs and powerful fighters resulting in more fish lost than caught but finally good to see some quality-sized fish show up.

LAS ARENAS

It’s been hit or miss alot for our Las Arenas anglers during this early part of the season. It hasn’t been bad. It’s just been erratic and inconsistent. One day great. Next day so-so. One boat does great. The boat next to it can’t even buy a fish! One day it’s cabrilla and sierra. The next day in the same spot, it’s bonito. Next day rooster fish, but no bonito.

There’s just no way to pinpoint anything!

However, late in the week we had a rush of some of those big yellowtail up to about 40 pounds plus amberjack, larger rooster fish and even some big pargo liso (mullet snapper) that we haven’t seen in awhile…surely not that big! This one was a slugger!

One of our guys also tied into a big-boy tuna we estimate over 100 pounds that he fought for over 2 hours until it busted him off by wrapping around a buoy!

We had some great flyfishers here this week. They really worked hard at it, but no roosters came up although several were almost agonizingly closely caught. However, they did get into action on bonito, ladyfish, and triggers.

Bait is still an issue, but we’re using anything we can get our hands on!

WHALESHARKS

Warm shallow bay water is a great place for these youngsters!

It seems like they’re lethargic swimmers until you get in the water with them. When they want to move, they can scoot. Look closely and you can see the sandy bottom.

I remember back in the day when we would get excited if there was a single whaleshark in the bay. Now, we’re so non-chalant that we’re not even excited if there’s less than 5 or 6. Many times, there’s way more! This past week or two, we’ve had as many as 3 dozen small to medium juvenile whalesharks in the bay up to about 20′ long! And they are only in about 10 feet of water so we’ve been running daily snorkel trips to swim with them. It’s an incredible experience with these gentle animals Thanks to Marcus Yoo for the great photos.

That’s our story!

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