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Posts Tagged ‘sierra’

Mike Whitlow and dad, Bobby, (Kennewick WA) stand amidst a “pretty good day of fishing.” They didn’t catch ALL these fish, but did pretty well. Actually, the fish are the lineup of 6 of our La Paz pangas that afternoon. The fishing started out slow because of Hurricane Paul, but as the week went on the dorado came charging back!

Great colors on this fresh bull taken north of La Paz by Ed Vander Veer on light tackle. This nice quality fish that Ed’s holding was pretty typical of the better sizes this past week plus many larger!

First timer from San Francisco, Steve Pinedo, got caught the first day and stalled by the hurricane and almost didn’t make it! But he got back in a good way with some outstanding dorado fishing including this hefty bull with Captain Marcos his first day of fishing.

From Clackamas, Oregon…fishing partners Todd Carver and Don Hines stacked some good fish later in the week after a slow start, but made up for it with some nice quality fish like these dorado while posed at Balandra Beach.

Trophy sailfish for Mary Heilman Vander Veer, our amiga from Washington. Mary will fish anytime…any place even in the rough weather we had before and just after the hurricane. She got her first sailfish here with our La Paz fleet after battling it on light tackle. Attempts to release the fish were unsuccessful and the fish was donated. Nicely done.

We had amigos from all over this week! From Arizona, Darrell LaMoure gets a hand from John Osborne on their first trip with us in La Paz. That has to be the shortest fattest bull dorado I’ve seen all season! It’s a trophy fish!

Al Yetter has already made two trips to see us this year and is working on dates for 2013. From Colorado, Al never seemed to stop laughing. Great colors on this hot bull dorado taken out of Las Arenas. Captain Pancho looks on!

Birthday fish for first timer, Craig Brown and Bob Layco, who came to see us from Washington. They also had to wait a day or two for the storms to pass, but got into the fish their last day and pulled on some good dorado like these two north of La Paz!

Charger fan in the house! Mike Shaw holds up one of his big dorado he caught while visiting us from San Diego on his first outting with Tailhunter. This fish was taken on live bait with our Tailhunter La Paz fleet.

Kenny Cambell hold up one of his Las Arenas dorado. Both our Tailhunter fleets had good showing this week after the storm passed. Las ARenas seemed to have more fish and La Paz had the larger fish!

This beautiful pargo mulatto (barred pargo) caught by Don Hines from Oregon ended up serving 13 people at our Tailhunter Restaurant that night! He was fishing with Captain Rogelio striking a pose in the background.

Lots of great amigos from Washington and Oregon these past few weeks including Erick Johnson fishing with Captain Alfredo putting this hefty bull dorado in the box near Espirito Santo Island.

Great time for light tackle! Bill Leech, all the way from Florida kept his spinning gear handy and took a nice dorado in the shallows!

HURRICANE PAUL BRUSHES BY BUT FISHING RECOVERS FAST WITH DORADO CHARGING BACK!

La Paz – Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Oct. 14-21, 2012

What a crazy week!  It started off well, but then a surprise hit as we were winged by the edge of Tropical Storm Paul that turned into “HURRICANE PAUL!”  Fortunately, we dodged the big bullet unlike our fellow cities to the north like Loreto ,but in La Paz we were still hit with winds and 2 days of rain that were enough to cancel our pangas and keep our clients hotel-bound for a day-or-two!

Believe me, that’s as tough on us as it is on our clients to have to stay indoors during their vacation!

But we started out again by Wednesday and with each passing day, conditions improved.  In fact, they got better fast!  I was amazed at how fast the muddy cloudy waters cleaned up. Faster than normal, which I’m sure had something to do with the improved bite.

Also the hurricane like winds did take a few days to diminish and we did have a few queasy souls out there the first few days after the storm (but some admitted it was abetted by too much tequila consumption the night before!).  But, again ,with each passing day the weather, water and winds improved.  In fact, since the storm, we’ve had some of the prettiest days in a long time.  Just brilliant blue.  The surrounding hills and mountains also could not be greener or more vibrant with flowers, grass and trees going full turbo…and the wild cows eating like it’s a free buffet line!  But, we’ve had more rain in the last month than we’ve had in 5 years combined!

As for the fishing, as I mentioned, we started the week well.  It’s been a pattern all year. We get going well then a storm comes along and changes the fishing landscape.

However, the dorado fishing by the end of the week was going solidly . This is for our La Paz as well as our Las Arenas fleet!  Not only did we have good number with limits being common, but also, the quality of the fish has been much improved. We’ve probably gotten a better ratio of bulls and fish in the 20-40 pound class than we’ve had all year.

The fish have moved around quite a bit, but with a little patience, we’re finding the fish.  You just have to be patient.  Some of the clients have admitted that they were getting discouraged when they had not had a bite by 11 or 12 noon, but then all of a sudden the rods went off and it was crazy nuts until the fish box was full!   The late bite has been a common pattern.  So, just hang in there!

In addition to the dorado, every day we’re getting marlin and sailfish hook ups with most fish being released plus nice roosterfish are still working as well up to about 40 pounds.  A few giant trophy pargo and cabrilla also being caught!  Unfortunately, no tuna but giant squid seem to keep popping up every few days.

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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Rod Brown is our good amigo from Wrangell, AK. He’s already made two trips to see us this year and was one of the guys who was able to post up a nice wahoo in what has been the best wahoo week in two years! Captain Jorge helps with the photo.

Captain Gerardo lends a hand to Jeanette and “Big Jimmy” Lee Gilman from Utah. First timers to fish with us, they won the trip by guessing how many bobbers were in the ice chest photo below when they came to the ISE Sportsmans show in Salt Lake City, UT last March! Talk about beginner’s luck…they got 5 nice dorado, a wahoo AND….two roosterfish that went 40-50 pounds! And outstanding day for anyone!

Lee Gillman in the photo above attended the Salt Lake City International Sportsmens Show in March and correctly guessed that there were 1934 bobbers in the marine ice chest above and won a 5 day/ 4 nights/ 2 days fishing trip with Tailhunter here in La Paz.

Hank Gonzalez and Captain Lorenzo flank happy angler, Robert “Blue” Nuss with his personal best bull dorado he caught out of Bahia de Los Muertos.

It was a pretty good week for sailfish! Chris Pallemaerts from Washington gets his buddy Josh to give him a hand with this big sailfish he caught fishing our Tailhunter La Paz fleet north of the city. They attempted to release the fish but were unable to revive it after it swallowed the hook. They donated the fish.

Our amigo, Charlie Gibson from Northern California, is here on his 2nd trip to La Paz this year and shows off one of his dorado he caught fishing with our Tailhunter La Paz fleet north of the city.

Talk about a great day! Joe Hussin barely had a line in the water off Punta Perrico when he got his first wahoo! Then, in the next hour, he caught 2 more of the nice ‘hoo’s! Three wahoo in an hour! Best of the year so far.

We had quite a few of our amigos who were on their 2nd trip of the year to La Paz to visit us including Leif Dover who lives in Atlanta GA and “commutes” to Hong Kong, China for work! Leif crossed “sailfish” off his bucket list with his first ever sailfish fishing with Captain Pancho off Las Arenas. The fish was released.

It’s always great when the kids get their first fish! Check out the two dorado that Julian Valdez caught out of Bahia de Los Muertos! Felicidades, amigo!

Bob Solee from the Portland, Oregon area was actually on his 3rd trip of the year with us and always does well. Bob holds up one of his La Paz dorado. Bob make some incredible custom fishing rods! Check them out at http://www.bandbcustomrods.com/

Curt Desjardins from Temecula CA was fishing with us for the first time and pulled this beautiful bull dorado while fishing with our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet.

FISHING ATTEMPTS TO REBOUND AFTER LAST WEEK’S STORMS WITH WAHOO DORADO BILLFISH!

La Paz – Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Sept 30 to Oct. 7, 2012

A week after we were hit with a hurricane, an earthquake and and floods from a tropical storm, things got back a little more to normal this past week.  Temperatures and skies could not have been prettier.  Definitely spectacular postcard-pretty weather.  However, the waters are taking a little longer to get back on track as runoff from the big rains cooled some areas of water or made it greener or murkier. 

 

But, as the week went on it steadily got better although fishing still did not get up to where it usually is this time of year.   The biggest danger was just fishing 1 days.  You COULD be the one or two boats that didn’t do well while the rest of the fleet was hooking fish.  Every day, about 80 percent of the boats did OK to good and a few just couldn’t get on the bite.  So, if you only fished one day, you did stand the chance of getting only a fish or two.

 

On the other hand, fortunately, most of our clients are here fishing 2, 3, 4 or more days and by the end of the trip, even with a slow day or two, they left with an ice chest of fillets and good Kodak moments!

 

There was no shortage of variety that’s for sure.  I think things are changing.  Of course, we had the usual dorado bite where probably 70 percent of this week’s bite were dorado.  Fish ranged in the 10-15 pound class, but there were larger fish up to 40 pounds well.  The problem was that there was no rhyme or reason as to where the fish would bite or why they would bite one day and not the next.  One “hot” captain would just smoke the fish and the next day that same captain could not get a single biter!   Or vise versa.  A captain on a slump would suddenly be the king of the beach the next day.

 

But, in addition to the dorado, we also saw our best week of wahoo.  Get this.  Some of the wahoo were smaller than big sierra!  I have NEVER seen some wahoo so small.  They were like miniature wahoo.  I’ had never seen 5 pound wahoo!  So, don’t get too excited.  But there were also some 20-30 pounders as well.  Again, like before, some of our pangas would hit the wahoo off Punta Perico and then the next day everyone would go to that spot and they would get skunked.  It was hit or miss, but given we’ve not had any wahoo for 2 seasons, we got more wahoo this week than in the past 2 years combined.

 

There were also some other good biters as well. Roosterfish are still prowling the shallows near the beaches and we got and released roosters in the 5-50 pound class all on live bait.  Larger baits produced larger fish!  There were also pargo, sierra, jack crevalle, lots of bonito and a stray tuna or two.

 

Additionally, it was a good week for sailfish and marlin with several being hooked each day and most released.

 That’s our story!

Jonathan and Jill

 

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 Videoshttp://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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Huge dorado almost looks pre-historic! Scott McKenzie was on his 2nd trip with us this year and was rewarded by this monster bull dorado he caught fishing with Captain Pancho and our Tailhunter Las Arena fleet. For Scott, it was his largest dorado and he had just been here 3 weeks ago with his sisters, but came back on this trip with his buddies. The dorado fishing prior to the storms was pretty steady!

What a week! This is a photo of the malecon…the waterfront road at the heart of La Paz under several feet of water after a week of suffering a partial hurricane then a tropical storm!

Huge sinkholes and potholes often were not evident under the rushing waters until someone tried to drive through them. Several times drivers and passengers had to be rescued and fortunately, no one was killed. During the final storm of Tropical Storm Norman, more than 12 inches of rain fell in 16 hours.

There’s a 4 lane highway under here someplace! One sign pointing south to Cabo about 100 miles away just on the edge of La Paz that got almost a week of heavy rains.

Good amigo, Tom Hinmon, from the Los Angeles area, shows off one of the larger bull dorado of the week he caught with our Las Arenas fleet. Unfortunately, Tom and his amigos had to cancel their 3rd day of fishing when rain washed out roads to Las Arenas.

and the next day the storm hit forcing cancelation of their 2nd day of fishing.

Derrick Tagawa and Mark Kojima teamed up for a nice day of dorado and a striped marlin fishing near Cerralvo Island. It was unfortunate that our two amigos only had two days of fishing

Chris Lynch and Pat Stoll started 3 days of fishing on a high note with a good day of dorado fishing with our Las Arenas fleet. Things went downhill from there as the rains started up that night. But the guys, to their credit, kept up the smiles and good spirits as did many of our disappointed anglers.

On his 2nd trip with us this year, Frank Vargas, came down from Seattle to enjoy some sunshine and fishing and on his 1st of 3 days of fishing started off with some great dorado fishing including this nice bull dorado.

Two of our best fish brothers from the Pacific Northwest, Rod maker Bob Solee for B & B rods in Portland and Grant Darby from Washington have fished with us so many times over all the years and never stop smiling. They started 3 days fishing with some nice dorado and Grant’s nice fat barred pargo!

Not bad for a first timer…Misty Rogers gets a hand from husband, Justin, and Captain Archangel on her big sailfish. The couple is from Idaho and were on their first visit to La Paz. Note the dark skies of the impending storms that hit soon after.

From the Sacramento CA area, Ron and Yvette Straub, had one of their better fishing trips with us showing off their first day on the water of 3. Nice bite of dorado on the beach at Bahia de Los Muertos.

Nick Keshish, Tom Moon, Robert and Bob Connell pose at Muertos Bay with some of their first day dorado.

Our amigo, Wade Gomes, from Sacramento has been with us many times and had many good trips, but really got snakebit the first 2 days with us. However, they kept at it and worked hard and hung in there and on day 3, finally found a willing school of nice dorado they they nailed while fishing with brother Greg Gomes. They were fishing north of La Paz near Espirito Santo Island

Steve and Kevin Resky started off well with a nice day of dorado and a lost pargo, but then rains hit and lost 2 days of fishing when the storm hit. These fish were caught with our Tailhunter Las Arenas fleet.

There’s still roosterfish around and we got a few this week for folks who wanted to get one off their bucket list. Justin Rogers from Idaho shows off his rooster before releasing it.

Wayne Wellsandt and Curt Desjardins fishing with our Las Arenas fleet and their family pulled in some nice dorado when the fish went off early in the week.

CRAZY WEEK  WITH A HURRICANE AN EARTHQUAKE THEN ANOTHER STORM WITH DORADO BITING EARLY

La Paz- Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Sept. 23-30, 2012

It was one of the strangest weeks ever in years.  It was certainly one for the record books.  In a week, we got sideswiped by Hurricane Miriam.   We got hit by a 6.2 earthquake.  And we got a Tropical Storm Norman that dropped 12 inches of rain on us in less than 24 hours!  It was a crazy week. 

 

We technically didn’t take the hurricane on the nose, but it brushed us and dropped several heavy afternoons of rain with thunder and lightning.  (We were still able to fish each day as the storms did not hit until late in the afternoon!).  However, it was during one of these big thundershowers on Tuesday that one giant “thunderclap” didn’t stop.  Thinks kept rumbling and then things started falling off the wall.  The floor started jumping and walls bending and we realized EARTHQUAKE!  Our staff went flying out the door into the rain as our Tailhunter offices and restaurant are in a 3 story concrete building that’s 100 years old!  Not the funnest place to be when things are shaking! 

 

Anyway, no real damage.  No one hurt.  More laughs when it was over than anything else but quakes are so unusual here, let alone one during a rainstorm that we were all scratching our heads as we stood in the rain! 

 

Then, late in the week as Hurricane Miriam was just leaving us, Tropical Storm Norman crashed into us dropping as much as 12 inches of rain in about 18 hours and truly flooding the city.  Cars were stranded in the deep waters.  People were stranded from getting to their homes and jobs as streets flooded.  It was like a hurricane without the 50 mph winds! 

 

For the first time in 3 years, we had to cancel pangas to the disappointment of many of us, but the roads to Las Arenas become too flooded and muddy with water-filled arroyos to go out and for our La Paz fleet, the port captain closed down the port re-calling all boats or preventing watercraft from leaving.  Real disappointing 2 days. 

 

We’ve gotten more rain in 3 weeks than we’ve had in 3 years.  In fact, we’ve pretty much had zero rain here in La Paz in 3 years and were in a drought situation.  This is also the first time in 3 years we’ve canceled pangas due to the weather.  What a week!

 

More specifically for the fishing…

 

Early in the week with hurricane Miriam dropping afternoon rains on us, we were still able to fish and were doing quite well for the most part.  Not great fishing ,but we were still catching.  Dorado were the main hitters and our Las Arenas fleet was more on target than our La Paz fleet.  Again, just like the week before, there were some low spots where some boats found the fish and others virtually right next to them struggled.  But dorado in the 15-20 pound class were the norm with some larger fish up to 45 pounds.

 

As mentioned, I think this past week, our Las Arenas fleet had the edge with not only better dorado action, but also more variety.  In terms of species, we had dorado, sailfish, striped marlin, pargo, blue bonito, pacific bonito, jack crevalle, and a few stray yellowfin tuna and a wahoo.  But, what was really exciting was that for the first time in 2 years the giant squid came up.  These were the nice 30 pounders and they came up out’ve the trench in front of the old Hotel Las Arenas.  I was especially excited because usually within a few days of squid coming up from the deep, the yellowfin tuna also come up.  But then the storm hit and we had 2 days of canceled trips.  Hopefully by the time you’re reading this we’ll have some tuna in the counts.

 

La Paz fishing continued to produce dorado as well, but not as well as we’ve been doing the past few months.  Colder greener water was the problem and it appears that waters might indeed be getting colder sooner than expected.  We started catching sierra mixed with the dorado which usually don’t show up until it gets cooler in late November.  Sierra are always an indicator of the colder water.

 

Hopefully, now that the storms have passed and not a cloud in the forecast, there will be lots of debris in the water which becomes perfect habitat for dorado.  Maybe we can make up this week for having to cancel a few days of fishing this past week!

 

That’s our story

Jonathan and Jill

 

 

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 Videoshttp://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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We don't catch alot of these during the prime-time part of the season, let alone the off-season during the winter, but these colorful hard-fighters are called palometa jacks and we've probably gotten more in the last 2 weeks than we've gotten in the last several seasons combined. Schools of the good-eating fish are congregating just offshore at the drop-offs near the reefs and beaches. Tim Zimmer got a handful just off the beach behind him of east Cerralvo Island.

It's a pretty simple formula. When the wind doesn't blow we're still able to get dorado even this late in the season. If the wind DOES blow, it gets pretty scratchy. Verdo Boyd fished with us a number of day over the past week-and-a-half and did a pretty good number on a variety of fish including dorado like this one. She was fishing with Captain Jorge.

Tim Zimmer fished with us a bunch of days since last week and shows off a pretty typical catch right now with a mix of sierra and the occasional dorado. He's posing here on the beach at Bahia de Los Muertos near Las Arenas.

It's been a long and crazy year! However, we count our blessing each day and thank you for being a part of those blessings. Enjoy the holidays and may the new year bring you all things good and thank you for asking us to share in the smiles all these years! You're the best!

ONLY TWO STRONG DAYS OF WIND MAKE FOR SOME DECENT WINTER FISHING

La Paz/ Las Arenas Fishing Report for Week of Dec. 11-18, 2011

The early part of the week was really quite nice fishing.  It was cloudy and overcast, but not cold and best of all…not windy!  Nice and flat.  And the fishing surprised us.  Good catches of dorado up to 20 pounds were hitting  just out of Bahia de Los Muertos as well as south side of Cerralvo Island.  One private boat of amigos went out to the 88 and said it was “unlimited” dorado fishing…”catch and release as fast as we could go full speed!”  All of this in winter!

As well, there were the bread-and-butter fish…sierra willing to go as well.  Our boats were averaging about 4-15 nice sierra with some up to 5 pounds and when a good school was found, the fish were voracious!  In addition to the sierra, we also found some surprising palometa schools which are members of the jack family…sort of like a greenish/yellow jack crevalle.  Great fighters and good eating as well!  A bit like pompano.  Some of the commercial guys out there were thick into the fish.

All of this was while the skies were grey and the winds were flat…

Then, about Thursday, the sun popped out and skies were brilliant.  And the winds came back up!  And fishing sort of tanked.  Bait got hard to find.  Fish scattered. Some scratchy sierra and dorado fishing.  Really picky bite.  And that was it…

Saturday, the winds died down again and the fish popped back up…it’s going to be a typical pattern during the winter.   But that’s what it’s like this time of year.  Everything is variable and you just have to roll with whatever is biting.

That’s our story!

Jonathan and Jill

Jonathan Roldan’s
Tailhunter International

 

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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:
https://fishreport.jonathanroldan.com/

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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