PHOTO 1: Waters got rough late in the week as winds kicked in over Easter weekend, but Bob “Gladiator Juice” Duncan of Santa Barbara went where other pangas didn’t want to go and was rewarded. He’s seriously bent her for almost 20 minutes when he dropped a live bait over the side. Study in intensity. Captain Jorge “Moscoron” looks on.
PHOTO 2: SCORE! Big yellowtail over the side. Using his mini- Whopper Stopper rod, Bob Duncan gets that yellowtail to gaff. Goofing, Jorge Romero from La Paz, our fishing buddy tried to stay anonymous. I think he was supposed to have been at work that day! Unfortunately, he’s now on the internet and his boss in La Paz reads the fishing reports!
PHOTO 3: Getting into the spirit of the weekend, Emily Duncan and dad, Bob, hold up a couple of nice sierra at Muertos Bay Beach. Sierra were thicker early in the week before the winds came up.
PHOTO 4: For the sheer joy of it all ! The smile from Christina Moreno, fishing for the first time, even though she grew up in La Paz, just beams, as does husband, Lance Cole. They had a nice day inshore with pargo and cabrilla and here she gets to find out that even little bonito pull hard!
PHOTO 5: Doesn’t get better than a big smile and a nice cabrilla from Christina Moreno of La Paz!
PHOTO 6: If you were willing to possibly get wet and blown around, there were still big yellowtail to be had. Jess Akeroth and Steve DiGuiseppe hoist some toad-sized slugger yellowtail taken while fishing out’ve La Paz north at the island.
PHOTO 7: Pargo city! Steve Di Guiseppe, Ross Martinez and Gabe Martinez hold up their day of pargo and cabrilla fishing when they headed north to Espiritu Island. They had 3 days of this kind of fishing. Steve is an attorney from Ventura Co. CA area and Gabe is an attorney from Las Vegas. I went to law school with both amigos. Dad, Ross Martinez, has an interesting history. He owned a gas station in Vegas that is now the site of the MGM Grand Hotel!
PHOTO 8: Fat yellowtail and big smiles for Gabe Martinez and dad, Ross Martinez of Las Vegas. The fish was taken out at El Bajo seamount.
PHOTO 10: OK…were’t not officially open yet, but we’re close! But we had a surprise birthday party for Jill at the FUBAR Cantina on the ground floor. Standing room only! Mariachis showed up and tequila and cerveza flowed. Incredible evening! We hope to be “officially open” this week!
PHOTO 11: We had a packed house. It was marked as a “private party” but people off the street just kept stopping in so we invited ’em on in! Great vibe. Great time. We’re excited about opening after more than 2 years of work.To be honest, it wasn’t a GREAT week of fishing, but some folks had a GREAT time! Does that make sense? The bite was so-so some days and winds came up late in the week, but those of our anglers who fished several days might have had a slow day here or there, but made up for it on other days.
It was a time-place issue. Right place at the right time with the correct currents and minimal wind. I’m not a big believer in the full-moon thing, but when you combine it with strong winds that kept shifting directions, high currents and quite a bit of spring break traffic, the bite wasn’t as good as it had been.
But…
EVERYONE still got fish! If you were willing to bust out north of town with my La Paz fleet, then there were big yellowtail, big pargo, cabrilla and roosters north around Cerralvo Island. The ticket, again was minimal winds and having the big baits like mackerel.
If you fish with my Las Arenas fleet, again…a lot of variety. Some of the guys early in the week were able to get out to the 88 bank and the outter buoys and got into some dorado that were incredible. Some 40 and 50 pound fish were logged in. Interestingly, there was FOG out there on the water too which was pretty eerie until the sun burned it off. How often do you see fog in Baja waters?
Inshore fishing produced smaller yellowtail plus a collection of sierra, jacks, roosterfish (some nice sized), bonito, pargo and cabrilla. I had some flyfisher this week that got beat up nicely by bonito and roosters and had a blast. The biggest problem were the huge numbers or pelicans and other birds. Sheesh…they hit almost every bait that hit the water.
Jill and I were on the water Saturday…the windiest day of the week. After so many bird incidents, we switched over to smaller Rapala, Yo-zuri and other shallow diving lures and trolled the rocks. This got the birds off our backs and we hit cabrilla and pargo one after the other losing several lures to big fish that took us into the rocks. The blue colored lures worked better.
That’s our story! Hope everyone had a great Easter!
Jonathan and Jill
Jonathan Roldan’s
That's My Story 
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