That's My Story

PHOTO 3: You’ll find few fish as tasty or as good looking at this fat cabrila being held by Shawn James of Los Angeles who was fishing north of La Paz around Espiritu Santo Island with his dad, Jack.
PHOTO 4 – Steve Marabella is going to hate that I’m going to call him one of my “poster boys” but Steve always seems to come out with some great catches whenever he comes down. Steve is from the San Pedro CA area and his holding onto a nice pargo lisa (mullet snapper) that he pulled out of the rocks off Punta Perrico.

Well, if you were here looking for dorado, tuna and billfish, you’d have been disappointed. There aer smatterings of them. For instance, the billfish are definitely here…being lazy flojos…sitting on the surface unwilling to eat and only swimming away at the last minute when a boat is about to run them over and there’s the occasional fish at the shark buoys, but I think we’re gonna have to kick it up a bit in the water temperature just a few degrees to get everything going. It might be only a matter of weeks or days. There’s some steady southwinds blowing and hopefully, that will bring up the warmer water temps and the fish. Only about 30-60 miles south of us on the East Cape, they’re already deep in to the pelagics and it’s only a matter of time!

In the meantime…

There’s some really dynamic inshore action going on. Check out the photos above. I mean…OK…nothing huge, but alot of that is due to the fact that when a 40 pound pargo or 50 pound yellowtail hits, they take you right into the rocks! So, what we see in the fish boxes isn’t always a true indicater of the action taking place!

The best action has been for our fleet at Las Arenas/ Muertos. The sierra action is still steady there along the beach north of the old Las Arenas hotel and south of the lighthouse on the point. If you want some great fishing in calm water literally yards from the beach, this is a hoot! If you check out the photos, you’ll see some of the size differences in the sierra. Some of these bad boys are close to 10 pound fish. Live bait slow trolled with wired-up hooks (bring some light wire) or fast trolled rapalas or slow trolled chrome lures are the hot-set up. Catching a limit of these tasty sierra are the rule rather than the exception!

As for other species, roosterfish (smaller ones) have shown up along the beach, mostly south of Muertos and in the bay itself. Just a matter of time until the large bad boys pop up, I think. In the past 3 seasons, our average rooster ran 40-90 pounds so we’re hoping for another good year of big fish.

As well, there’s a smattering of big yellowtail at the island, along the ridges and near Punta Perrico where the pargo are still frustrating anglers busting them off at every turn. Also, especially for our flyrodders, the bonito are BIG…12-15 pound butt kickers! On a 10 wt flyrod, that’s a 15 minute fight and we had two guys bust their fly rods this past week.

For our La Paz fleet…it’s been hit or miss. The fish are definitely there, but the capriciousness of the wind has been the determining factor. It can change from north to south in a matter of minutes and calm seas can turn frothy with no warnings. I was out on the water one day this past week with Ravi Bashylar from St. Louis and Mike Mullen from Philadelphia and we pushed out in flat seas in the morning with high expectations.

There had been a jag of big yellowtail and cabrilla at La Reina lighthouse at the north end of Cerralvo Island. We had just gotten there and set up the lines when WHAM! We went from Walden Pond to Victory at Sea. The wind started howling and the chop had us bailing water. We got soaked and the guys did their best to hang in there, but ultimately we ended up with only a few small pargo. Had we been able to hang, I’m sure the yellowtail woulda hit the yo-yo iron and big mackeral baits we had!

Things are still unpredicatble right now. Wish I could get a handle on things. The winds are the main factor. If they’re blowing the game plan goes out the door and you do the best you can. If it’s not blowing…anything can happen and it’s usually good!

We’ll keep you posted!

That’s my story

Jonathan

Website: www.tailhunter-international.com

Phone: (626) 333-3355FAX: (626) 333-0115

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U.S. Office: 3319 White Cloud Dr., Suite A, Hacienda Hts. CA 91745

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