That's My Story

June 27, 2009 by riplipboy

PHOTO 1: “Changes in latitudes…changes in atitudes” – Jimmy Buffett. A summer sunset this week in La Paz Bay. Cheers to our Colorado amigo, Dave Hagen, for taking the shot. He spent this past week with us taking both fish and fotos!

PHOTO 2: All it takes is one! After getting skunked all day, Junior Azores from Ventura CA dropped down a live zebra fish and got hammered by this big amberjack for his only fish of the day but it made him king of the beach. The big fish topped out a 50 pound scale and we estimate that it would have gone 60 pounds. This fish is the big cousin to the yellowtail.

PHOTO 3: From Denver, Dave Wade made his first trip to see us down here in La Paz and spent a few days fishing with our Las Arenas Fleet then with our La Paz fleet. He went home with quite a few dorado fillets similar to this bull mahi he put in the boat fishing out’ve Las Arenas.

PHOTO 4: DORADO SEASON is ON! Full turbo dorado for bulls like this fish caught by Sandra Raveling from who is stationed in Seattle with the U.S. military. She’s helped by Frank Gillespie from Utah. This was especially a hard-fought fish because if you look closely at the flank, you’ll see the white “nick” where she actually snagged the big dorado and had to really wrestle with the fish for 45 minutes on light tackle!

PHOTO 5: Can it be???? A yellowfin tuna??? Yes…your eyes don’t deceive you. But don’t get too excited. I think this fish was lost or something. Our Fish Brother, Alan Nojadera, from Ventura CA was hopping the outter buoys off Las Arenas with our fleet for bigger dorado and hung this YFT. It’s the only yellowfin we’ve seen in weeks and there were no signs of any other fish either. It was just a wrong-way fish!

PHOTO 6: Newly-wed catch! Just so you don’t think that dorado are the only things we’re catching, Austin Adams and Stephanie (Schmidt) Adams from Utah came to spend some honeymoon time with us and got tangled with some nice jack crevalle (toro) that are still schooling off the beach and beating up anglers. That’s Cerralvo Island in the background.

PHOTO 7: Strike the pose! Big fish on the beach being held by Isaac Schmidt from Utah who pulled this out’ve the waters near Punta Perrico. The fish went 32-pounds and took a live sardine. Little brother, Nathaniel, holds up his own dorado in the background.

PHOTO 8: I wish I could have gotten a photo of these guys with their flyrods. Bob Yagnich (left) and Manny Martinez came to visit us from Colorado with flyrods in hand intent on roosterfish and dorado. They got both, but they really tangled with the dorado. Manny broke his 10wt rod on this big bull dorado just as it got near the boat! Time to check on that warranty! Both were fishing with our Tailhunter Las Arenas Fleet.

PHOTO 9: Wendy Fantozzi is one of our favorite amigas and she CAN fish! Here she holds up a nice amberjack she got on live bait. Fishing 4 days with her husband Jonathan Spier, the pair got dorado, amberjack, bonito and pargo. Also, happy birthday, Wendy!!! How was that tequila shot at the FUBAR Cantina?

PHOTO 10: I couldn’t help but publish this shot. I THINK it’s Dave Wade from Denver. He wins the tatoo award for creativity!

PHOTO 11: Sed Roldan from Hacienda Heights…yes, this is my dad…came to visit us for Father’s Day. It was great to have him down and have him hang out at the new bar and restaurant. He got his first roosterfish off Las Arenas Beach. He’s helped here by Captain Adolfo. The fish was released as were several others.

PHOTO 12: Our buddy Dave Wehner from Northern California comes to see us every year and usually goes home with a load of fish and Kodak moments such as this one with a big bull dorado he took off Boca de Alamo with out fleet using live bait. We did a majority of our fishing off Las ARenas this week because of high winds on the La Paz side, but everyone got fish!

PHOTO 13: From BAKERSFIELD, CA, Ken and son, Steve Gragg, ran into some of that rough wind and weather we had mid-week but hung in and nailed some nice dorado including this pair on live bait with our Las Arenas Fleet.

DORADO GO FULL TURBO ON ANGLERS THIS WEEK DESPITE SOME ROUGH WEATHER!

La Paz / Las Arenas Report for Week of June 21 to 27, 2009

We had some touch-and-go-weather this week as we watched storms build to the south of us and intially promise wind and rain. Fortunately, the darned things blew out and to the west far to the south of us bringing only a few days of strong winds during mid-week.

Fortunately, most of the wind was around La Paz (really rough!) but having two fleets, we simply moved those folks who didn’t want the rough stuff to go fishing with our Las Arenas fleet where waters were generally alot calmer and fish were certainly alot closer to shore.

Either way, this week there were no shortage of dorado. You might go all day and hit nothing then BOOM! You find the spot and the waters explode with 10, 20, 30 or more fish and every rod bent! Or, you might hit a fish here. Two there. Another one here. At the end of the day you realize you had a pretty full day and your box was full!

There are alot of small fish around in the 5 pound class and great to see so many of them released. However, fish in the 20-40 pound class are running out there too and some larger bulls closer to 50 were hung and even more were lost…many by angler error or simply because these are outstanding fighting fish that can rip line; do aerial acrobatics or dog-down deep!

The biggest thing was reminding folks that THERE ARE LIMITS and INSPECTORS ARE CHECKING (more on that below), but even then, in the heat of battle it’s hard to think of catch-and-release! Give it some thought beforehand so that when the time comes, it’s not a big thing to pull the hook and let the fish…especially the females and smaller fish go.

These fish are biting on live bait, dead strip bait as well as lures although the bigger fish are produced by larger baits such as caballito and dead strips of fresh bonito or skipjack.

Other species include roosterfish (sometimes all you can handle!); marlin…stripers and blues (many feeding on the young dorado)…pargo, amberjack, pompano, jack crevalle and cabrilla.

Hot areas include Boca de Alamo; the inner and outer buoys; any of the high spots and banks, the channel outside of Las Cruces, Punta Arena; Punta Perrico; the SE side of Espiritu Santo Island.

LICENSES AND LIMITS

Yes, they are checking right now! Inspectors are going boat-to-boat somedays. They are checking boat licenses as well as angler licenses. We are one of the only authorized vendors of fishing licenses so we have them here at our store…but that means you also have to have them on you when they ask for them!!! Don’t leave them in your room. Inspectors are friendly and professional, but they can and have confiscated some fishing gear; fish and other items. It’s the law!

Also, they are being much more thorough about limits. The days of packing 20 and 30 small dorado in the boat are long gone, but even then, there’s no reason to put a dozen baby dink dorado in the box. The inspectors ARE being pretty lenient, but they CAN enforce the limits harshly. Listen…I don’t agree with alot of things they do, but they have been hammering ALOT of boats, especially south of us on the East Cape. No reason to tempt anyone. Many incidents start with not having your licenses! It’s a simple thing. All-in-all, the inspectors that have been in our area have not been jerks. Very professional and a few times, were understanding when a fisherman said he forgot his license in his jacket back in his room. Just a heads-up! Our fishermen have been really great and realizing they have alot of fish anyway so have been readily releasing much of their catch as have other fleets as well. At the end of the trip, many still have more fish than they can bring home.

JACK

Thanks to all of you who offered prayers, good thoughts and money for our friend and family member, Jack Velez, who has been in the U.S. for the last 3 weeks. It turned out he had and continues to have a complicated heart problem. Doctors in Mexico could do nothing so he went to the states where they somewhat stabilized him but he’s still very weak. They were going to do a bypass on him, but are unable to do so and he’s been released from the hospital to come home now to La Paz. He hopes to be ready to pass out breakfasts and bad jokes shortly like always. I have forwarded all your great e-mails to him and he has read and appreciated all of them and says “thanks for the jokes!” God bless you all for keeping him in your thoughts and prayers.

That’s our story!

Jonathan and Jill

Tailhunter International La Paz

http://www.tailhunter-international.com/