It’s the dead of winter and dorado are still biting! In between the winter winds, we still have quality fishing including bull dorado and other blue water species! Check this gorgeous bull in full color lit up just next to the panga.
Surprisingly some of the best wahoo fishing of the year the last few weeks! Take a look at this awesome wahoo that Jason Jacobs from Phoenix AZ pulled out during two days of fishing. Hefty ‘hoo!
I have already had several folks ask me if we took a fiberglass fish mount off the wall for this photo because of the incredible colors! This is as good a shot as it gets and Adam Smith and Captain Jorge pose it well. That’s Bahia de los Muertos in the background. Check out the calm waters. They didn’t have to go too far off the beach for this nice mahi mahi. Adam was visiting us from Arizona.
First real yellowtail of the season! Wow…big fork tail and hamachi for the grill. Jason’s got big smiles for this slug fish caught off Las Arenas. Hope this is an indication of a good yellowtail season if fish this big are already moving in!
It’s not snowing and he’s got a t-shirt on! All the way from Alaska, Tim Bowman, was fishing just off Bahia de los Muertos in great conditions when he hooked this nice bull dorado on live bait.
Hard to believe we’re getting this kind of quality fish so late in the season, but even Gail Jacobs pulled a wahoo out with help from Captain Pancho just off Isla Cerralvo. She also got dorado and sierra!
SURPRISE FISHING WHEN WINDS AREN’T BLOWING! (…but the wind blows a lot!)
La Paz / Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Dec. 23-30, 2012
We had a much better week of fishing this past week mainly because we had much better luck with the winds. This is, of course, that time of year when winds can get howling and it’s almost pointless to be out there and get bounced around in a panga.
Lots of snow-birds in town who decide they want to do a day of fishing and we often have to steer them to different days or postpone their trips when the winds come up. Sometimes, we just tell them, it’s better not to fish at all unfortunately.
What they don’t understand often is that even if the Bay of La Paz is calm, outside, it can often be treacherously rough and getting to the fishing grounds is almost futile. Even other times when it’s a little calmer, you still have to go find bait or the bait man has to have bait available to sell. If the waters are too rough, bait will be hard to obtain because the rough waters prevent anyone from getting to the areas where the sardines are holding.
Even other times when it seems relatively calm, there can be big swells that make it uncomfortable and dangerous. In fact, this coming week doesn’t look very promising! Pretty much if there’s storms in the western U.S. then Baja and the Sea of Cortez is very often affected by windy conditions.
So, this past week, we actually got a few days where the winds layed down enough for us to fish! Sure enough, the fish bit.
Sierra are almost a sure thing with some really quality grade sierra up to 4-6 pounds evident along the shorelines where the bottom starts to drop off. Even on the windier days, the fact that the sierra are so close to shore is a bonus as we don’t have to go out so far.
Inshore also, we’re surprisingly still getting rooster fish up to about 10 pounds which can be fun. We even had some flyfishers able to throw at roosters this past week. Pargo and cabrilla are also in the mix.
But, without having to go too much further out, we also got into some nice grade dorado in the 10-20 pound class which normally aren’t around in December. No one complained. The fish were school-sized, but I have a feeling some of the larger bulls are still around as we got into some 40 pounders less than 2 weeks ago.
In addition to the surprising dorado, we’re still finding the occasional wahoo and billfish too, but I can tell waters are finally cooling off as some husky stray yellowtail up to 25 pounds have found their way into the fish counts as well. Hopefully, finding yellowtail of this grade is a good sign for the coming season and these are the vanguard of large fish moving into our waters.
As for the wahoo…who knows? There’s a smattering of wahoo in several areas and it’s like hitting a lottery ticket when we hook them. Or at least like finding a 20 dollar bill in your pants pocket you didn’t expect! No one is expecting them, but boy, what nice fish! Hopefully, they’ll stick around awhile longer. There’s not much traffic out there now that it’s off-season and we’re finding the fish off Cerralvo Island as well as Punta Perico.
That’s our story!
Jonathan and Jilly
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