The story of the week was “Hurricane Bud” the storm that was…or was not!

The week started well with a continuation of some really great fishing for both our Tailhunter Las Arenas and Tailhunter La Paz Fleets. Nice sizable 30-80 pound tuna from the north end of Cerralvo Island continued to bend rods, test wills, backs and break hearts at the same time. Marlin started to show including our first blue of the season, an estimated 300-350 pounder. Additionally, nice dorado, amberjack and even some yellowtail kept the variety going.

For our Tailhunter La Paz Fleet, inshore fishing for lots of snapper, pargo and huge cabrilla continued unabated plus legit 10-25 pound schools of dorado were great for some of the families and new-comers we had.

Then, Hurricane Bud decided to crash the party.

It started as a serious Hurricane Category 4, but diminished as it headed north towards Baja. By early week, we were already getting clouds. This is really early for Baja and us in La Paz to see big storms like this. But everyone started getting ready a hunkering down. You really never know about these things as memories of historic Hurricane Odile in 2014 with 200 mph winds are still fresh. Odile looked like it was going away then suddenly turned overnight picked up speed and smashed into us.

We all watched Bud as it slowly and ominously approached. With the cloudy skies, big rolling swells from the south started to affect us well before the Bud reached us. By Wednesday Bud had diminished to a Tropical Storm, but still lashed Cabo San Lucas to the south of us causing flooding and issues with the airport and incoming and outgoing flights.

By Thursday, we had pulled our boats out’ve the water and the Port Captain shut down all boat traffic and prohibited any water activities.

The skies got darker and darker and Bud hit us…

And it was kinda…MEH…”Was that a storm?” Ho-hum. Bud turned into “BUD LIGHT.” Still would not have sent any fishing boats out, but other than some sporadic rain that cleaned my car it was mostly winds of about 30 mph. I guess we should be thankful.

On Friday, the Port remained closed and the rain left, but the aftermath of winds to about 45 miles per hour kicked up the whitecaps in the bay and rattled windows and bent trees. But that was it. Grateful it wasn’t worse, but knowing it wasn’t safe to be out on the water, I’m sorry for the folks who were here who lost fishing days and had their vacations messed up. Most of them kept great attitudes and understood that weather is an unavoidable variable with fishing. But, we still felt badly for them.

So, it affected maybe 3 days. Back on the water Friday with trepidation. Had to get folks out’ve their rooms locked in with cabin fever. But after a storm you just never know. Waters are often dirty from runoff water or turned over from the winds. Fish are skittish.

However, surprisingly fish bounced back! The water was a little off, closer to shore but blue water was easily found probably owing to the fact that we really didn’t get much rain. However, even without having to go far, our captains found dorado, pargo, cabrilla, snapper, jack crevalle, bonito and even some of those hefty 50 -60 pound tuna!

So, Hurricane Bud took away about 3 days from our week in an almost non-event. We’re just glad it wasn’t worse. To the south of us, they got hit a bit harder.