La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay/ Suenos Bay Fishing Report from Tailhunter Sportfishing for Week of May 12-19, 2019

May 19, 2019 by riplipboy

FULL MOON? WIND? TUNA and ROOSTERS DON’T CARE!

La Paz -Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay/ Suenos Bay Fishing Report for Week of May 12-19, 2019

MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT (a little longer than normal!)

The Big Picture and the Rest of the Story…

All by herself!!! Peggy Miller’s first time and she rocked this big 70-pound-class tuna all by herself for almost 90 minutes! She and husband Ken are from Montana on their first visit to La Paz!

Captain Armando helps pose with a happy Dave Schiefelbein of Colorado who was on his first day of fishing and battled this 80 pound-class yellowfin tuna for almost 2 hours. His first ever!

Jed Hinkle from MONTANA (Thanks, Jed!) seems to have a knack for big roosters every time he visits. Just off the Las Arenas lighthouse he caught and released this rooster estimated (by the captain) and 95-pounds. It’s bigger than it looks! Jed is a really tall guy!

So many first-timers did so well this week. Laura Brunell hadn’t even fished before until about 2 weeks before her La Paz trip and her very first fish right off-the-bat is this hefty yellowfin she fought for almost 90 minutes all by herself. Boyfriend Blake Warren got a 55-pound rooster caught-and-released as well.

We had an incredible week of big pompano and this is one of the biggest! Nina Le from New Mexico holds up this tasty species of the jack family!

Tom Mullican has been visiting us for a number of years now twice a year and after catching this nice bull told me he had NEVER caught a big bull dorado in all that time! Tom’s from Dallas, TX.

A Washington smile from Jerry White who only had one day to fish but made it a good one with about 5 species of fish including his first roosterfish. The fish was released.

Two firsts! Kyndall Hinkle from Montana gets her first marlin with Captain Gerardo and also our first marlin of the season as well! Just outside of Bahia de los Suenos/ Muertos. On live bait! The fish could not be released.

These two had a great 3 days of fishing. Jeff and Patty Killian from Oregon show off a day of variety fishing over the reefs that produced pompano, snapper, white bonito, amberjack and pargo!

Captain Armando was on fire this week! First-timer from Arizona, Russel was on this fish over 3 hours! His arms were “rubber!”

First roosterfish is a good one. Right off the beach, Ken Miller, caught and released this nice fish!

Tom Reed was able to squeeze in a short trip that produced this quality yellowfin on the first day that he brought back to Tailhunter Restaurant for some poke and sashime!

Kyndall and Jed Hinkle were part of an incredible week of big pompano fishing. Great eating fish! That’s Punta Perrico in the background.

First-timers had it going on this week! Brian Dang’s first time trip kicked out this nice yellowfin tuna and a big smile on the beach. Brian is from New Mexico.

Captain Armando, Patty Killian and a nice barred pargo!

One off the bucket list for Tom Mullican. He has an amberjack in the left hand and a rainbow runner in his right. The rainbow runners are related to yellowtail. This is a big one!

Captain Victor helps Wayne Krafft from Washington with his rooster that they released after the photo. Roosters were center stage this week.

Another big pompano in the boat for Nina! First thing at sunrise!

Christoper Le and Captain Jorge with a thumbs-up on a nice rack of pompano on the cleaning table!

I was worried this week when I saw the full moon and the probability that it would also combine with strong winds…again. I’m not usually so worried about the moon phases as I am with wind, but in tandem they can be havoc with tides, currents and consequently the fishing.

However, we might have had one of the best weeks of the fishing season!

In all honesty, we did not catch as many fish as previous weeks, but what we lost in quantity, we made up for with quality with the largest fish of the season. And, frankly, if you’re tied onto a single big fish for 1 or 2 hours, you don’t have time to catch a bunch of small fish! But that’s exactly what happened.

We still had a tremendous amount of variety in terms of species that included amberjack; yellowtail; 3 species of pargo (pargo liso / pargo mulatto / dog-tooth) ; cabrilla; yellow snapper, red snapper, bonito (common and white bonito); jack crevalle and wahoo (caught, but not landed) .

We also got our first marlin of the season!

However, we also got into several days of the largest pompano I have ever seen in several decades here with big hefty 10-pound fish.

In those same areas, the roosterfish came on strong with fish between 40 and 90 pounds getting caught and released. By far our best roosterfish week of the season with some sightings or entire schools of roosterfish crashing baits along the beaches. One of my captains said, there could have been “hundreds” of big roosterfish in one school!

The big highlight was our first solid week of tuna. And these were NOT football fish. There were those mean 40-100 pound yellowfin that have a tendency to even break strong men! Most of these fish took 1-3 hours on our lighter live bait tackle and most of the fish taken in shallower water.

The fun thing was that it seemed that many of the larger fish were hooked by first-timers or the wives and girlfriends! It was great to see them grit it out and all of them enjoyed it! There were even larger fish that were battled and came unbuttoned or the lines broke after long fights!

For alot of folks, it was their biggest fish…or their first fish…or a new species they had never caught…or the longest fight…

It made for great stories, photos and a fun week!

That’s our story!