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Posts Tagged ‘Espirito Santo Island’

First-time visitors from Washington and new amigos, Barbette Davidson and Robert Brooks got into a sweet dorado bite out’ve Bahia de Los Muertos early in the week with some good quality fish. The bite at Las Arenas has definitely improved since earlier in the season.

Oh the agony! Ed does his best to hold up one of his dorado  caught on his panga while  our popular driver, Carlos looks on. Nice rack of fish to take home standing there at the beach at Bahia de Los Muertos!

This was just crazy! Normally, flat and blue and pretty-as-a-postcard, two of our captains struggle to get the panga back on the trailer and out of the water. Note the chop and muddy waters from rains! Southern winds whipped the normallly calm seas into a froth on one of the few days of the season when it was just crazy to try to get fish. The sun was out but the seas were not being kind. This was the remnant of Tropical Storm Kristy that was blowing several hundred miles away.

La Paz has gotten more rain in the past 3 weeks than the last 3 years! Almost every afternoon, for about 10-30 minutes we get localized rain or thundershowers. Sometimes just breezers and sometimes gully-washers! This is the view outstide Tailhunter Restaurant. Ten minutes later the sun was out blazing again!

For those of you who have fished with us over all the years, you know how dry our desert looks and what the drive to Las Arenas looks like! Well, after 3 weeks of rain…TAKE A LOOK! Grass is growing. Flowers are blooming. Butterflies are all overthe place. The WILD  SKINNY COWS ARE GETTING FAT! Everything is green! The mountains are sprouting jungles!  It’s like the earth has turned into a giant Chia Pet!

Our amigo, Al Yu, wasn’t trying to catch a billfish. He had a sardine out on light tackle trying to catch a dorado when this sailfish bit on 30 pound test! Fight on! They were going to release the fish, but it had swallowed the hook. Still a nice catch, Al! We did get quite a few hook ups on sails this week, all were either released or got off!

Jeanine Stenzel and her husband Roy are technically our La Paz neighbors since they completed their house in La Paz and they come to visit us every few weeks always trying to get in a day of fishing! Our amiga poses with one of several she hooked fishing with our Las Arenas fleet from Bahia de Los Muertos.

Had to post up this one of our daughter, Jessie, with another dorado and the big smile. Check out the skies. Pretty much how it looks every afternoon just before the rains come. Fortunately, most of the times everyone is already in and able to enjoy the cool downpour over a cold cerveza. Jess was fishing near Espirito Santo Island when she hooked this one!

Fred Li had a few banner days of fishing with us and really got into the dorado like this one taken north of La Paz!

WORKING A LITTLE HARDER FOR OUR FISH THIS PAST WEEK BUT DORADO AND SOME TUNA KEEP IT BENT!

La Paz-Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Sept. 9-16, 2012

It was hard to get too excited this week.  We have so many great weeks of fishing I’d have to say this week was OK.  There was some good fishing.  There was some great fishing.  And then, there were some bad days of fishing.   That about sums it up.

No way to put a finger on it.  We continued to have tropical conditions with variable weather that dropped mega sunshine on us one minute with tons of humidity followed by growing clouds in the afternoon and often heavy localized thundershowers.  (By “localized” I mean it would rain like the 2nd coming of Noah in one spots but ¼ mile away, it would be dry as toast!).  The weather might be a part of it.  We have not had a hurricane but instead have had about 3 weeks of mini-showers.  Very welcome to the area since we’ve not had pretty much any rain for about 3 years.  However, in the last 3 weeks, we’ve had more cumulative rain than in the past 3 years combined.  By most opinions, we’ll take little afternoon thundershowers over a hurricane any day!

But, it also meant variable fishing.  I mean, everyone got fish.  If you fished more than 1 days, you were gonna get fish.  Most of it was going to be dorado.  But one day, you could be absolute aces and the hero on the beach and the next day, with no changes at all, you might end up with barely one fish!   5 pangas would fish an area and 3 would get limited early and be back on the beach.  One would get 3 fish.  The last panga fishing exactly in the same spot would get one little dorado!  The next day it might be all reversed.

The highlight of the week was the tuna that blew up at Las Arenas.  In fact, it was an epic bite off Cerralvo Island that some guys described “the bite of a lifetime!”  “All we could want.”  “Just stupid good fishing!”  About mid-week the football tuna…8-12 pounders…just came boiling and biting about anything that got thrown in the water!  Just wild.  We all thought that it was finally the beginning of “tuna season.”

Well…

Not so fast.  Just like in the past when the tuna sort of peeked out…the tuna disappeared the next day in rough choppy waters spurred by high winds that made it literally crazy to even try to get to the tuna grounds.  (See the photo above of what Muertos Bay looked like!)  And that was that.  As the week went on, a few tuna popped up, but nothing to get too excited about.

So, that’s the bite.  Dorado.  Some tuna.  A few sailfish.  Oh…and a wahoo.  Dorado are still the big biters so I figure we’ll let these waters calm down from the tropical storms and they’ll come foaming back.

I did want to share one story from Barbette Davidson who fished with us this week with Rob Brooks (See the top photo with all the dorado).  She tells us that on the plane ride back to Washington Rob fell asleep.

“Robert fell asleep on the plane and was slouching forward a little bit and all of a sudden he pulled back hard against the seat with his head and lifted his arms.  This woke him up and I asked him what he was doing and he said he thought he had a “fish on”.  LOL he was dreaming of catching fish!”

That’s our story!

Jonathan and Jilly

 

Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter International

Website: www.tailhunter-international.com

Mexico Office: Tailhunter International, 755 Paseo Obregon, La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico

U.S. Mailing Address:  Tailhunter International, P.O. Box 1149, Alpine  CA  91903-1149
Phones:
from USA : 626-638-3383
from Mexico: 044-612-14-17863

.
Tailhunter Weekly Fishing Report:
http://www.tailhunter-international.com/fishreport.htm

Tailhunter YouTube Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pangapirate


“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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Yes! Even we get to fish now and then and it was great to get on the water with Jilly for an epic day of non-stop dorado fishing where we hooked and released over 40 fish before noon! Great week of dorado fishing even with the full moon! Here, Jill ducks behind Captain Joel with another bull dorado that was thrashing around wildly before Joel released the fish!

The ladies were on fire this week! Especially alot of first timers like Sylva Ourghoulian from Pasadena CA who came with our long-time amigo and her new husband Avo. Avo is a great fisherman and wanted to have a good experience for Sylva. She got limits of dorado each day plus some nice roosterfish!

Like I said, the ladies were rocking this week! From Sacramento, another first-timer, Becky Csotoras, was just off the Las Arenas lighthouse when she caught and released this nice roosterfish. She and her dad also got into the dorado bite this week as well.

Every time he comes down, Fred Sontag, from St. Louis MO says, “This is the best trip ever!” Four days of hot dorado, roosterfish and marlin fishing resulted in lots of fillets headed back to the midwest including this trophy big-headed bull dorado taken near Espirito Santo Island.

Our long time friend from Colorado, Doug Oclassen got his son, Andrew out with us for a day and off Las Arenas pulled in some nice roosterfish like this one. It’s turning into thee best roosterfish season in memory. Pretty much 99 percent of all the roosters like this one are getting released. Great job, guys! Andy is looking alot like dad these days!

Not many of these in Montana! Phil Matteson said he got “everything on his bucket list” on this trip to La Paz, his first! Dorado, roosterfish and this marlin shown with Captain Boli holding on!

Rex Smith has been visiting us for years. Our amigo did three days fishing with our La Paz fleet and had limits of dorado like this one every day. Rex is from the Phoenix AZ area and is posing here at Balandra Beach north of La Paz.

Big smiles for another of our ladies who had a good trip. From Utah, Kim Woodard, shows off another nice bull dorado that jumped on the line. Kim and her family had good results on dorado and roostefish over several days of fishing with us!

Fishing with grandpa, John Ehlers, from Colorado, 14-year-old Cheyenne says she cannot get enough of the ocean and was on her first trip ever to La Paz! Posing here with our popular Captain Pancho with our Las Arenas fleet, she’s holding one of several big roosterfish she caught and released. She also did several days of banner dorado fishing with grandpa, John!

One of the larger striped marlin of the week, Mike Sontag, has visited us a number of times and finally got his billfish. From North Carolina, Mike’s fish was estimated at about 150 pounds. The billfish have really gotten up to speed this past week even with the full moon and about 90 percent have been released. Mike’s panga hooked two others that got away.

More big smiles to go with a big dorado! The ladies were pulling hard on the fish all week and Karen Matteson from Montana was no exception. Nice dorado…big roosterfish…pargo…a real good trip and nice to have fun folks from Montana. I think Montana people just bring good fishing with them! Nicely done, Karen!

Dustyn Woodard is 17-years-old, and had a great trip sticking a bunch of big roosters with Captain Gerardo and releasing them all. He and his family, from Utah, also popped some great dorado. This was Dustyn’s first trip to see us.

Northern Cal resident, Jimmy Csutoras, saw an article in the S.F. Chronicle about Tailhunter and booked a trip with us. He got dorado and roosters and also got one of the only pargo we’ve seen in awhile! He got several of these nice barred pargo. That’s Punta Arenas in the background and they were very close to the beach!

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Check out this underwater clip in slo-motion of a wild dorado hooked (then released)!  Turn up the sound.  If you can’t see the embedded video clip, click the youtube link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xl-JF0VOcM&feature=plcp

FULL MOON PRODUCES BEST DORADO BITE OF THE SEASON!

La Paz- Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of July 1-8, 2012

What’s the big deal about the full moon?  I keep telling people it really doesn’t seem to make much difference down here. As a matter of fact, we just had the best dorado week of the season in the full moon.  At times, folks were catching and releasing fish as fast as they could go!   Somedays the bite was later in the day but other our anglers were full of fish by breakfast time!  Once it started it could be pandemonium with double and triple hook ups.  Some of our clients told us they released dozens of dorado each day.

Most of the dorado fishing was north of La Paz and was found in a nice wedge from the Las Cruces/ Gordo area then up to the east side of Espirito Santo Island and up to the Charo Bank.  There’s a nice current line of sargasso weeds holding fish all up and down that area.  There’s lots of voracious 10-15 pounders all along that area that are almost fighting each other to get to the hooks but there’s also some nicer 20-50 pound bruisers mixed in as well.  In the last 2 weeks, it’s like someone threw a switch!

On Friday, Jill and I snuck out for a “quick day of fishing.”  What we ran into was one of our all-time best days on the water in 16 years of living here.  We ran into that line of sargasso weed along the east side of Espirito Santo Island.  Just on a lark we did not follow the rest of the fleet that morning which had gone south to check out the Las Cruces area where the dorado had been biting fairly steadily.

Our first bait immediately got slammed…as did our 2nd and 3rd…by 8 a.m. we had caught and released almost 20 dorado!  By 10 a.m. we had over 30 fish hooked and released.  And we were still the only ones fishing the area!  By 10:30 we were joined by the rest of the fleet and everyone hooked up!  There were dorado everywhere.  Under the boat, it looked like a fish pond!  There were dorado darting in and out of the weed line and current break.  Dorado were jumping following flying fish and one flying fish smacked Jill on the arm followed by a dorado that was chasing the bait that blew up in her face and narrowly missed her.

By 11 that morning we stopped counting at 40 dorado caught and released!  By this time we had switched to complete circle hooks and were also using all kinds of goofy lures that were in the tackle box!  Our last 3 fish were caught by us just dangling BARE HOOKS in the water and watching dorado come out from under the boat and 1…2…3…SLAM!  HOOK UP! BARE HOOKS!

As we pulled off the spot at 11:30 so we could back to the office, dorado were still jumping all around the boat as if yelling, “FEED ME! “  Way fun day.  Of course not every boat did that well, but more often than not all the pangas this week fishing La Paz came back with limits.  And if not, a quick query would tell you that they lost quite a few fish!

In that same area, especially with all the smaller punk dorado around, marlin and sailfish have also moved in to the area and are actively feeding.  We had quite a few hooked, lost and released this week with most in the 100-120 pound class.

Around Las Arenas, our fleet there continues to do well on the roosterfish.  If you’ve ever wanted to check a roosterfish off your “bucket list, ” this has been the year for it. Roosters in the 20-50 pound class have not been uncommon and they’re very close to the beaches where you can visually cast to them and watch the pick up!  Pretty exciting stuff to watch those huge dorsal fins cut through the water!  Las Arenas also produced some marlin and sailfish for us this week as well as pargo.

That’s our story!

Jonathan and Jill

 

Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter International

Website: www.tailhunter-international.com
U.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Drive, Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
Mexico Office: 755 Paseo Obregon, La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico
Phones:
from USA : 626-638-3383
from Mexico: 044-612-14-17863

.
Tailhunter Weekly Fishing Report:
http://www.tailhunter-international.com/fishreport.htm

Tailhunter YouTube Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pangapirate


“When your life finally flashes before your eyes, you will have only moments to regret all the things in life you never had the courage to try.”

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