TUNA AND DORADO CONTINUE TO BLOW UP FOR ANGLERS!
FISHING REPORT FOR SEPTEMBER 24, 2006
PHOTO 1 : Dave Hansow of Grand Junction, Colorado is a westling coach and holds up a sweet 25 pound yellowfin tuna (we put it on the scale!) at Las Arenas beach that at a chunk of squid. After two days of fishing tuna and dorado Coach Hansow said he was “completely sore, tired and feeling old.”
PHOTO 2: Talk about a chunk of calamri! We used part of this for bait and we fried up the rest. Tony Betz of San Diego got this off Las Arenas lighthouse and Captain Jorge “Moscoron” gives him a hand. Many of the squid are even larger!
PHOTO 3: Don Melucci from San Diego always has a good trip. Here he shows off a nice rack of yellowfin tuna
PHOTO 4: Greg Perez and Brian Martin from Orange Co. CA got several ice chests full of dorado like this. Here’s they’re standing at Balandra Beach north of La Paz
PHOTO 5: Stewart Silva from Orange Co. CA had 3 days of this kind of dorado fishing this week!
PHOTO 6: Check out this 60 pound pargo (dog tooth snapper) ! This fat critter was caught by Greg Gomes from Northern CA. He’s assisted by Capt. Adolfo (“Yofo”) and Greg’s son, Dalondo. Greg actually hooked several of these before finally getting this monster out of the rocks near Las Arenas at a place we call “Castille.”
PHOTO 7 : Todd Brushwyler from Fontana CA got several fish like this 49 pound giant bull dorado. It was a good week for Todd who works for G & T guitars and says he’ll “hook me up!”
PHOTO 8: Isaac Cortez of Oxnard CA gets an assist from Capt. Eddie Carballo with this 47 pound dorado that was a personal best for Isaac. He fought the fish over an hour!
FISHING OFF THE CHARTS!!!!
Just another outstanding banner week of fishing! With air temperatures in the mid-90’s and water temps in the low 90’s, it was flat, sunny, warm and blue most of the week and again, the fish came to chew! It was almost one-stop shopping fishing and the kind of fall fishing La Paz is famous for.
LAS ARENAS
How easy is this? I was out on the water several times this week (check out all the photos!) and if you wanted tuna, this was surely tuna week, but this was sometimes silly. We’d push off the beach in the pangas and head about a half mile west of the Arenas lighthouse (that’s all of 10 minutes). We’d drop the big squid jigs and get our early morning wake up call pulling up these huge beasts from the deep! Some of these monsters are rolling at 50-70 pounds (see the photo of one of the “smaller guys!). It’s a workout pulling up one of these guys and that’s just to start the day.
It gets pretty funny because all the pangas are in tight and when the squid start coming up, all this stuff can be squirting all over with geysers of ink and water shooting all over the place and anglers grunting and laughing. You know how us guys are…give us a water balloon and a squirt gun and we’re easily entertained especially if you can soak your buddy! Tell ya what, if you’re not watching out, getting a jet full of squid water is like getting hosed with a jet spray and you just hope it’s not ink too! But some of these squid can hose 10 feet in the air! That’s some power!
Anyway…get some squid (pop some into the ice chest and bring it back to your hotel to fry some up!) and cut them into chunks. Then head right back to the beach. I mean…100 yards in front of the old Hotel Las Arenas!
Drop chunks into the water and stick your hook into another chunk and let it drift and WHAM!!! Tuna hook up! Earlier in the week the tuna were 35-40 pounds, but dropped to the 15-25 pound range later in the week. Also as the bite got more steady, more boats started showing up so the boats that showed up earlier in the week or even the boats that showed up earlier in the day before all the traffic showed up had an edge! Get there as early as possible!
Among the tuna, every now and then, dorado would also blow through as well. All in all a lot of fun and when all was said and done, the fishing spot is only 5 minutes and away from where we take off and only 100 yards or less from the beach!
Hot tip…if you can, bring a giant squid jig plus a 12 oz torpedo sinker if you can get your hands on one. A squid jig that is already weighted is a plus. My own personal ones weigh over a pound. Also, if you have 25 pound flurocarbon leader, after the tuna get shy with all the boats around, the fluro is a bonus. Just make sure you tell your skipper. Lastly, if your skipper hangs out even after it seems like the bite has shut off, it’s a trick we’ve been pulling. As the other boats move off to do other things, we’ve noticed that as the boats dwindle off…the tuna come back up! So, your skipper is being cagey and playing the numbers…just be patient!
LA PAZ
What can I say? It’s madness…sheer utter dorado madness every since the hurricane earlier this month! I don’t know what happened! Did the hurricane drop some mutant nuclear stuff in the water? All of a sudden, all those punk dorado we had turned into steroid mutant beasts! I kid you not…if you ever wanted a trophy dorado, the last few weeks have been nothing short of magnificent. A “small” dorado right now is about 20 pounds! The “larger” variety can be…well…most of our scales just don’t go that high, but some of my captains have estimated some fish up to 70 pounds!!! Think about that.
If you look at the photos above, the largest there is 49 pounds! Imagine what a 60 or 70 pound toad might look like and you get an idea.
Basically, we’ve been doing most of our damage at Espiritu Santo Island. There was one day (Saturday) when it was completely snotty and windblown but even then the mahi still big like dogs! The fish have been right about where the island splits in two on either the west or east side of the island. Using slow trolled sardines or small caballitos as well as strips of fresh bonito, you wait until you get ripped, then throw bait and wait until you see the “flashes” of green shoot through then you’d better have your guns ready and back up rods all lined up because it can go fast and furious in nano-seconds! I’m serious…if you can keep the school around, it’s slash and burn time and you’ve got no time to be tying on new hooks. If you hesitate a moment the school swims over to torment the next boat!!! And you have to start rolling again. But…if you’re ready to play…it can be incredible 1, 2, 3, or 4 rods going at the same time until your arms fall off. Some of these fights on the larger mahi are taking over an hour to get the fish to the boat and I cannot begin to tell you how many stories I’ve heard of “larger fish” that simply got away; got unbuttoned while jumping or even…BITING THROUGH the leader material!
Whatever you do or have in your hand…I highly recommend bringing at least 40 pound string or 40 pound leader material to splice to your main line! These fish will eat the 50 and 60 pound string as long as your bait is swimming naturally! One day we tied on a small bonito to 50 pound string and it got blasted, but the dorado merely took the bait and then swam around the boat like a sealion tossing the little bonito in the air and catching it the swimming and tossing it in the air again! Great entertainment but hard for me to keep my angler from jumping the gun and pulling the trigger on the fish…especially because it was about a 40 pounder. However, what happened was that the big fish dropped his “toy” and a smaller fish zoomed in like a kid stealing a french fry and running for the door and grabbed the bonito and took of with it! Way too much fun!
I’m exhausted and fired up just writing about this stuff! Today is Sunday and I’m not on the water for the first time in several days so I could get this report out to you plus I have to send folks to the airport and bring new ones in, but I’m back on the water again Monday with clients then most of this week so I’m totally amped! I hope this bite stays hot!
AIRLINE ALERT
Just for the fun of it to see if I could ruffle some feathers, I walked into the Aero Cal office here in La Paz with my handful of tickets. I put on my “game” face and acted angry. I went to the first girl at the counter and demanded a refund. She started laughing. “No refunds, Sorry!” In fact, all 4 girls at the counter (the place was empty) started grinning and gigling at me as if I had on the wrong colored socks or my fly was open. It was like listening to 4 parrots..”No refunds! Sorry!” ….”No refunds! Sorry!” one after the other. How could I not crack up too. I walked out smiling. I have already applied to have my tickets reversed by my credit card company anyway, but just wanted to see what Aero Cal would say…
One good piece of news…I’ve already told you that Alaska starts flying her to La Paz Oct 30th and quite a few of you have taken advantage of it to book trips in November. I just heard that Nov 15th, Alaska will probably start flying here from San Francisco as well so all you Bay people…head’s up!
That’s my story! (my fingers are tired!)
Jonathan
Jonathan Roldan’s Tailhunter International
Website: www.tailhunter-international.com
Phone: (626) 333-3355
FAX: (626) 333-0115
E-Mail: Riplipboy@aol.com
U.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745
Mexico office: Carr. a Pichlingue KM5; Numero 205, La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico
“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.”
That's My Story 
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