La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Report for Week of May 15-22, 2016

May 23, 2016 by riplipboy

First timer hits a big one! Jay Gibbons from Payette, Idaho got in the middle of a school of big dog-tooth snapper near Cerralvo Island with Captain Gerardo of the Tailhunter fleet and managed to get this big one to the boat and losing several others to the rocks and big teeth. He was fishing for rooster fish with a big sabalo (ladyfish) when the school of snapper came up from the rocks.

Kelsea Taylor from Kansas was visiting with her husband for the first time to La Paz and got in a day of fishing. She tangled with dorado, but locked into this nice yellowfin tuna that’s about as big as she is, but she battled it tough. She’s shown with her husband, Dave, and captain Jorge from the Tailhunter Fleet.

Jake Spencer wrestles with a big thick yellowtail to try to hold it still for a photo as the fish slaps him around! He got a great photo, nonetheless! He was fishing with our Tailhunter La Paz fleet out’ve La Paz Bay.

Captain Victor knows something is up. Jason hooked 2 wahoo and thought he had a “slow day.” He didn’t know how prized wahoo are. Anglers come for years and never get one. He also didn’t know how good eating they are and gave away all his fish! I told him a chunk of wahoo can go for as much as $50 a pound!

Just when we thought the cold-water fishing was done, the yellowtail came on strong this week for our La Paz and Las Arenas fleets for Tailhunter. Rick Choate from Boise, Idaho shows off a monster yellowtail he got on live bait near Espirito Santo Island. This was his first time fishing with Tailhunter and visiting La Paz

Randy Choate, our good amigo from Payette ID, gets a hand from Tailhunter Captain Boli with another big yellowtail. This is very big fish…I think Randy is about 6’4″ tall. Others were lost but Randy said the yellowtail were hitting baits right on the surface!

From McCammon, Idaho, Tom Mullican is making two trips to La Paz this year. He’s coming back in the fall, but this early trip paid off with a huge mullet snapper (pargo liso) that really went back and forth before he got it in the boat. He was using live bait.

Nice day and some really nice amberjack for Captain Armando with Al and Lisa Salmen who only had one day to get on the water with us and did well.

One of our favorite funny guys (“I am always in trouble with Jilly!), Tom Ames holds up another of the big yellowtail that decided to come up and bite this week with our La Paz fleet.

Eric Davignon grouper cabrilla 5-16 tags

Whoa! That’s a monster cabrilla for Eric Davignon from Sacramento CA with host Gary Wagner our amigo, who owns the Giggling Marlin bar in Cabo and the Rancho de Costa in Bahia de los Muertos.

Captain Jorge with our friends, Allen and Stacey Wellborn with a big sierra and an amberjack on the beach at Bahia de los Muertos.

This man can fish…and he can eat fish! Our amigo, Kevin Shiotani gives a thumbs up to 4 yellowtail on the concrete boat ramp at Bahia de los Muertos. The fish were picked up off Cerralvo Island.

Tom has had some kind of a week with a giant pargo, wahoo, tuna, yellowtail AND dorado in the boat! But see the photo below of how it was hooked!

Whatever it takes! Tom Mullican got a TUNA AND a TRIGGERFISH while trolling for WAHOO on the same lure! Go figure. The tuna is a bluewater swimmer. The triggerfish hang out near the bottom close to rocks! Captain Pancho tries to unhook them!

Whatever it takes! Tom Mullican got his TUNA AND a TRIGGERFISH while trolling for WAHOO on the same lure! Go figure. The tuna is a bluewater swimmer. The triggerfish hang out near the bottom close to rocks! Captain Pancho tries to unhook them!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Someone saw this photo and said, “It looks like someone has found a new say to smoke fish!” Al Salmen plants a big wet one on his amberjack.

…and Jake Spencer decides NOT to give a full lip-lock kiss to this toothy barracuda!

FULL MOON BRINGS BIG FISH!

La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Report for Week of May 15-22, 2016

I’m not sure if the big full moon did us any favors, but it surely didn’t seem to hurt us this week. We had some really strong winds come up early that were a bigger nuisance than the moon but when the winds tapered off later in the week, fishing cranked up. There weren’t ALOT of fish but the ones we seemed to get were TOADS and HORSES! Plus there were some surprise bites too!

LA PAZ

What’s going on here? I was pretty much writing off the cold-water bite for the season. It’s getting warm. The sun is out and the waters and air are showing summer everywhere. We had not gotten yellowtail in weeks. Even when they were biting, it was so-so. I would not have even called it a yellowtail season. With El Nino, our waters were just too warm to give us much of a cold water season.

Then, out’ve nowhere, the yellowtail start biting. And not little weenie firecrackers either. These were 25-50 pound sluggers that came pretty close to pulling guys outta their socks. We got a few, but probably lost 3 for every fish boated.

And these were NOT fish skulking down deep. These fish were FOAMING and crashing on the surface and were taking flylined (no weight) live and dead baits! Some guys had some epic battles.

I don’t know how long these grade of fish will be around. But, we’re enjoying it! Or getting frustrated by lost fish! Up to now, I’ve not hesitated sending guys out with light tackle because all we had was some smallish fun dorado. But these yellowtail are busting 40, 50 and 60 pound test, especially if the angler doesn’t pressure the fish to keep the out’ve the rocks! Or conversely, the anglers panic and horse the fish and break off by not letting the fish run a bit. (It’s a delicate balance that just makes it fun…until you lose the fish!).

Those little dorado are still around too and we’re seeing a bit more activity with pargo and cabrilla too! Billfish are around, but not yet willing to chew!

LAS ARENAS

Again, just like with our Taihunter La Paz fleet…it’s crazy! Cold water monsters came back!

Big yellowtail showed up to about 40 pounds…

Amberjack to 30 pounds…

Sierra, big cabrilla, jack crevalle, delicious white bonito…

And the return of the big dog-tooth cubera snapper and the mullet snapper (pargo liso)! We had big schools of them near the island spawning just like in the old days so that it looked like a “Japanese koi pond on steroids” with 20-50 pound fish swirling and crashing! We lost quite a few fish in the shallow waters, but the fish that came in were beasts!

And then, late in the week, not only did the 20-40 pound wahoo show up, but we also hooked some yellowfin tuna as well…footballs of 15-25 pounds! Again, we lost more fish than we caught, but you never knew what was out there.

Surprisingly, not many rooster fish were caught, but that could also be because we didn’t have that many guys out chasing them with the other species that have shown up.

That’s our story!

combo-signature-black letters