WARM WATER FISHING AND SEASON COOLING OFF

La Paz – Las Arenas/ Muertos Bay/ Suenos Bay Fishing Report for Week of Oct. 6-13, 2023

SHORT ATTENTION SPAN FISHING REPORT

WEATHER:  It has been erratic to say the least.  Definitely cooling down a bit.  Mostly now in the high 80’s during the day but feels hotter because of the humidity.  Hurricane Lidia didn’t hit us, but it did send some torrential rain one afternoon with big floods. Winds and even waterspouts showed up this week.  Cooler?  Yes…I’m wearing a sweatshirt as I write this!

WATER:  Overall, definitely rougher.  More wind.  Waters are hotter than normal and very very off-color requiring we find blue water to be able to fish. As the week went on however, each day got a little bit better as the waters cleared up.

SPECIES HOOKED THIS WEEK:  Dorado, bonito, sailfish, jack crevalle, roosterfish, pompano, snapper

LAS ARENAS FLEET:  It’s been the toughest two weeks I have ever seen.  Waters are cloudy and hot.  I think there’s very little oxygen in the upper layers and the fish have gone deep.  Plus hurricane Lidia to the south of us pushed up waves and winds and more crazy water.  Very little bait. Hope this changes soon.  I’ve never had days where there were literally no fish.  Just before this report, however, we started getting clearer water and the bite improved.

LA PAZ FLEET:  Once we found the blue water way way up past Espirito Santo Island, we also hit the dorado again.

MEXICAN MINUTE VIDEO REPORT

THE BIG PICTURE and the REST of the STORY…

Even Captain Boli gets a smile over Kenny Nishimura’s dorado caught near Espirito Santo Island. After the slow-down two weeks ago, fishing started to rebound for the dorado.

Two of our long-time Tailhunter Fish Brothers…Brad Baker and newly retired Jim Adair.

Two of our besties! John and Arla Washington from Reno come to visit us each year for their anniversary.

Alan Paonessa and his sister, Dru Toeniskoetter take a nice pose with a pair of dorado on Bahia Muertos Beach.

Kenny Campbell and Angelo Oliverio have visited us for years. The retired firefighters got a nice bull on the gaff among others! Ken’s in Arizona now and Angelo is in S.Cal.

Jim Bovee our San Diego, amigo, loves dorado fishing and this is his 4th trip this year to see us. Despite the rough weather, he still managed a nice rack of fish.

First-timing with us, Matt Malone, had a banner 3 days of fishing and went home with a nice batch of dorado fillets like this one with Captain Pancho.

Julie and Travis Millspaugh from Washington bring their extended families to visit us almost every year. Even with the tough fishing, they never lost the smiles.

Captain Hugo with David Wakabayashi and Gary Okamoto from the Sacramento CA area have visited us many times over the years and found a couple of dorado and a slug tuna even with the fishing being a bit sticky.

Crazy for it to be October, but we’re catching quite a few pompano which are usually caught in the spring like this one that Kenny Nishimura caught. The waters are cooling off.

The big bonito we have right now are either a super prize or a big PITA! They are vicious fighters that can beat the heck out’ve any angler. Brad Baker has a sample.

You’ve heard of “air guitar?” Colby Harris with his mom, Brenda takes a pose with “air dorado.” He just applied for college. They’re from Arizona.

Our amigo, Dana Milano, was out with Captai Raul and found a good jag of dorado north of La Paz near Espirito Santo Island.

Angelo and Kenny again. Kenny has one of those pretty all-blue dorado that we’ve caught a few times this season.

The Harris family had just one day to squeeze in some fishing. Sienna, Colby, Brenda and Neil did a line up with some of their dorado. Each boat got a nice limit.

__________________________________

I’m not even sure where to start this week.

This fishing report will be all over the board and possibly as difficult to understand as the weather and fishing the past week or two…

I will say this.  We’re hopefully emerging from some of the worst/ strangest fishing and conditions that I have ever encountered in some 30 years down here.

The genesis of this was about 2 weeks ago.  We had a tremendous full moon which, in and of itself, is usually not a big deal.  But this one created huge current and tide swings.  Coupled with increasing winds as the seasons changed had a big effect.

Moreover, we had several big tropical storms…short but powerful coupled with big waves and a huge up-welling of tremendously warm water.  Surface temps were unbelievably in the high 80’s!

What happened was that the waters turned murky and dirty.  A huge plankton bloom went off. Apparently this chased to fish to other areas and also depleted the oxygen supply in the upper layers of the water columns.  Fish went deep or just refused to eat. Live bait disappeared.

It was like the ocean had turned into a barren aqua desert!

I’ve never had so many boats coming back with zero fish!  ZERO FISH!  Think about that.

Sure, every now and then a boat has an off day.  It happens.  It’s fishing.  But, they’ll tell me they caught some bonito or jacks or had a day of needlefish.

But we actually had boats coming back without even a single bite!  Plus we had to resort to using dead bait, frozen bait or chopped bonito or squid to even make it through the day.

We went from having one of the best fishing seasons ever to a non-existent fishing season almost over night.   On top of that, it was evident that the seasons started to turn.  Normally, things start to cool down about the end of October or the beginning of November.  But, it’s hard to deny that the northern winds are already starting to blow hard.  It’s hard not to notice that the air temperatures and humidity are dropping.  It’s hard to ignore that we have started to catch cooler water fish species now like sierra and pompano.

So, everything was pretty much dead in the water…no pun intended.

Oh, I almost forgot.  We had Hurricane Lidia.  It started to head out to the Pacific.  It then made a crazy right turn right towards Mexico.  It ramped up to a Cat 3 tempest and fortunately did not hit Baja directly.  Instead it went to and crashed into Nayarit.

Still…some of those hurricane arms came over us and dropped some heavy rains and crazy weather on us.  We got some big-time flooding.

Amazing how many people try to drive through the floodwaters.

Uh yea…30 minutes of torrential rain and wind do a number on our waterfront. Then the sun pops out again!

We had sunshine that would suddenly turn bleak and ominous.

The view from Bahia Muertos where we launch is looking kinda foreboding.

We even got some dangerous-looking waterspouts that had boats running in the opposite directions understandably.  Then, it would disappear the and sun would pop out again.

Yeow! 6 waterspouts were seen this day.

However, little-by-little we started getting some breaks.  The captains worked hard.  The fishermen hung in there and kept their smiles and patience.  And little patches of blue water started to emerge.

With the blue water, there were some decent biters or dorado again.  Even a few tuna popped up as well.  Still not up-to-speed, but at least boats started to find fish and some fish were making it into the fish boxes.

So, as of this writing, it looks like every day there’s a little improvement.  We can only hope.  There’s still a few weeks left of the formal fishing season before the big winds and big seas crash into us so I can only hope that it holds off for a little while longer.  It all showed up several weeks too soon!

But, bottom line…I’ve never seen so many variables collide at one time affect the fishing so adversely.

That’s my story!

Jonathan