La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Report for Week of June 5-12, 2016

June 13, 2016 by riplipboy

Whoa! First-timers with us! Mike Gonzalves, Jacob Curtis, Don Vegter from Torrance CA put the lures in the water and within minutes later all heck broke loose. Three wahoo…1, 2, 3 !!!! Two others were lost! As the guys tell me, one of the purple Rapalas must have been crashed by a beast…the split ring holding one set of treble hooks on the lure was torn apart by the impact. Never seen that happen although on two occasions over the years, I’ve seen wahoo hit so hard the Rapala was actually broken or cracked…and you know what it takes to bust one of those!

Young Alex Coleman had quite a week! Three roosters (released) and two wahoo! See photos below.

Doin’ it right! Ryan Williamson from Washington on his first trip here with Tailhunter dropped a purple Rapala with Captain Juan at the north end of Cerralvo Island near La Reyna and almost immediately got ripped by this toothy speedster! Wahoo blood on the deck! ‪

That’s alot of meat! Mike Donnelly and Ed Sorenson put the heavy wood to this big dog-tooth snapper and amberjack outside of Bahia de los Muertos.

Bob Sayre from Chicago and our own Jorge Romero hooked this striped marlin that Bob fought for about an hour on just 40 pound test line. After he got it in (could not be released and meat was donated), Jorge’s line went screaming. They thought it was a big tuna as the first run took over 400 yards of line. Jorge fought the fish almost 2 hours to find it it was a 300 pound shark.

Like I said, Alex Coleman from Bakersfield had a a great week of fishing. Here’s one of his two wahoo. Cerralvo Island in the background.

Our friend from Woodland, Washington Grant Jensen got a nice bull dorado with Captain Victor.

The “right kind” for Don Vegter and Mike Gonsalves from Torrance CA. This was Don’s first wahoo. During the week he caught about 5 different species that he had never caught!

Scott and brother Jim Damron from Portland OR with one of the nicer yellowfin tuna of the week.

Montana girl on the beach, Jessica Reeves and Captain Armando with a good looking bull dorado.

Always with a trophy fish, our own Donna Thompson fishing with Captain Hugo got this big barred pargo with a jig.

First day fishing and first trip to see us in La Paz, Jim Wilson from Marion, S. Dakota caught and released two nice roosterfish. Here’s the first!

Ron Lawver, Sr. and his son, Ron, Jr. from Phoenix with a striped marlin they caught right out’ve the chute their firsts day of fishing The fish could not be released.

He’s taking this one to our Tailhunter Restaurant. Tasty amberjack for Grant Jensen from Woodland, WA. These are great eating and relate to yellowtail.

Pretty fish for Dale Damron from Oregon. This barred pargo came back to the Tailhunter Restaurant for dinner.

Over 3 days of fishing, Mike Donnelly and Ed Sorenson caught about a dozen different species of fish including sharks, pargo, cabrilla, jack crevalle, bonito and others. Here, they’ve got a handful of pompano amberjack and a white bonito.

Captain Armando with Jessica and Shelley Reeves from Montana. Shelley has a dorado in her hands and Jessica has about the biggest rainbow runner I’ve seen in years. It’s cousin to the yellowtail and a good eater!

Tasty pompano for Carol Damron from Oregon. She caught a number of different species on her one day on the water with us.

Ken and Alex Gragg roosterfish tags 6-16 double

Ken Gragg and his stepson, Alex Coleman, did a double hook-up just off the sand at Punta Arenas on two pretty roosterfish. Both were released.

WINDIEST WEEK – LOTS OF VARIETY!

La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay Fishing Report for Week of June 5-12, 2016

Crazy windy week here which is nuts for June. None of us down here can remember it ever being this windy in June and surely not for so many consecutive days. It made for some really choppy unusual waters and some especially chilly mornings where us locals were wearing jackets, long pants and sweatshirts even though by afternoon, it broke into the high 90’s. Of course, all of that had an effect on fishing…and our anglers too!

Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay

Again, like other weeks there is just no way to describe the fishing there. It’s great. It’s bad. It’s super. It’s stinky. It’s up. It’s down. We’re catching this. But we’re not catching that. Weather as great. Weather was crap. Every day is different. Every panga is different. Every angler has a different opinion…EVERY DAY! Some come back with long faces and don’t talk when they get back. Others have a great day on the panga right next to it and can’t stop jumping up and down about the great day they had. The next day, it’s just the opposite. I’ve had clients just get skunked day-after-day. Regulars who normally do great. Then, I have rookies who go out every day and have banner days that are off-the-charts! This particular week has been a microcosm of the whole season…so far.

But, take a look at the photos this week. Hard to deny that there’s fish around. The other side of the equation is that…some anglers who come back with bad days…HOOKED FISH but lost them! Now THAT’s a different story. Some of these fish are BIG. If the fish comes off…if the line breaks…if the angler makes an error…or hey, sometimes that fish just wasn’t meant to be caught…well, that’s just fishing! And there were some big fish caught.

So, darn Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay sure has been kicking out alot of variety! If you want to go to a spot and catch a fish you’ve never caught before or want to cross a fish off your bucket list, we had as many as 14 different species this week! One day alone, I counted 10 different species. Some of the fish this week included:

Pargo – some dog-tooth up to 20 pounds

Yellow snapper

Bonito – white bonito that tastes like tuna with some great meat

Yellowfin tuna – firecracker footballs

Yellowtail – up to 20 pounds (just a few)

Striped marlin – 100 to120 pounders

Cabrilla – (Mexican seabass)

Amberjack – (like giant yellowtail) but most about 10-15 pounds

Barred Pargo – some big ones!

Jack Crevalle

Dorado – finally getting larger up to about 15 pounds, but not alot of them

Roosterfish – 25 to 60 pounders this week

Wahoo – Lost a few but the ones caught were about 20-40 pounders

Rainbow runners – same family as yellowtail and good eating

Pompano – delicious 5-10 pounders

…and SHARKS! Lots of sharks!

Holy cow…where did all the sharks come from?

We normally don’t catch many, and we’ve not had much of anything at all for the whole season. But this week, I believe we hooked over 25 of them in the pangas! Hammerheads…blues…thresher…lemon…mako…reef…Some of them were 200-300 pounders.

We call them the “grinning men in the grey suits!” We think they moved in to feed on all the bonito we have in the water right now. But, some days, every panga hooked 1-2 of them and the fights lasted up to 2 hours and just beat up the anglers! Of course, we release all of them and would never put them into our pangas as a security issue (I used to commercially fish sharks and even a dead shark can injure someone). But, they’re a great sport fish to hook up, but they will surely take the fight to you.

In the hot sun, it can really beat you up. Alot of the time, the angler gets slammed and really don’t know what they’ve hooked. A big tuna? A marlin? No telling on this first blistering runs! It’s not until the fish is close to the boat after agonizing time on a bent rod, they realize they’ve been fighting a shark!

LA PAZ

Like Las Arenas, our La Paz anglers have encountered some of the same things. The bite varies from day-to-day and from panga to panga and location to location. It’s a big ocean out there and a panga 100 yards away from another panga can have completely different outcomes. Wind had an effect on where we fished as well since fishing out’ve La Paz, there’s alot more open water and we have to travel further to the fishing areas.

The north end of Cerralvo Island produced some really nice wahoo and amberjack this week although a bit of a run to La Reyna and La Reynita. The wahoo were larger 40 pounders. The amberjack bigger than 50 pounds with some really big fish lost.

As well, there’s more dorado on the La Paz side than Las Arenas and up to about 18 or 20 pounds at times. Around the islands and reefs, decent fishing for bigger pargo, cabrilla and amberjack with big white bonito and jack crevalle around the drop offs.

MORE BIG HEARTS – (and some big hearts from small people…read below!)

Our amigo from Kansas, Marion Lawver, came down with a bunch of things for the kids stuffed in his ice chest.

Colorado gets a shout-out for special friends, Diego and Kelly Jimenez who have been bringing things every year for the kids and families. And there’s a special story to this as well. See the attached story!

These two toys have a remarkable story on how they ended up in Mexico with Jill and Catlyn, our Mexican pocket panther, giving their approval.

For 3 years, our wonderful friends and clients have been donating to our Tailhunter Outreach Program where we collect things for some underserved schoolkids as well as for the womens shelter here in La Paz. We’ve collected well-over 2000 pounds for Jill’s program thanks to you and more gets brought every week! On behalf of so many kids and families, we are incredibly grateful.

Take a look at the photo above. Good Tailhunter friends, Kelly and Diego Jimenez arrived with some great school supplies but when they dug into their own suitcases back at the hotel, they found two favorite dolls that belonged to their granddaughter.

The dolls had been hidden in the luggage. There was a note that said,
“These are my favorite, but maybe a little girl in Mexico needs them more and they will make her happy.”

Sigh…

You have a great week.

That’s our story!

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