August 21, 2016 
With school sessions now set to start the new fall semester, we have seen lighter crowds of tourists arriving. With all around fish reports not being up to normal expectations we are not seeing any large numbers of anglers arriving either. Tropical weather conditions continue, this past week was calm, warm, humid, with plenty of sunshine, now we have the latest Tropical Storm Kay swirling off the lower Peninsula a couple of hundred miles to the west, bringing scattered rainfall, but no port closures at this time, looks like we will see same patterns through much of next week. When forecasts call for 80% chance at rain, often this refers to isolated areas, clouds that pass through relatively quickly and do not account to much of a problem. We are not expected any high winds or swells to develop from TS Kay. Tidal swings have been high now due to the full moon phase, also this bright moon did not seem to help the fishing action much either.
The week started off with decent catches for a combination of dorado, yellowfin tuna, billfish and assorted structure species, but as the week progressed, action became more spread out and not as productive, hard to pinpoint a particular reason for this, considering ocean conditions seemed favorable, though there were strong current that were running, varying from day to day, also very warm water, averaging 85 degrees, lots of natural food source on the fishing grounds and then the bright full moon, all these can be combined factors for the slack in action.
Bait suppliers have been offering live caballito and also more slabs of giant squid are being used again, for drift fishing and targeting the tuna, more bolito and skipjack on the grounds are now being used as larger trolling baits. Other options included using yo-yo jigs early in the day over the rocky areas. No particular spot has been really consistent recently, though best chances overall have centered around the Iman Bank, though on the Gordo Banks a handful of larger gamefish, including a couple of yellowfin tuna in the 200 lb. class, as well as black and blue marlin to 300 lb., though overall the Gordo Banks have been quiet, just an occasional hook up reported, but this is the place where the largest fish have been produced.
Early in the week we saw a couple of days of good dorado action, mostly for smaller sized fish, with a handful of fish in the 15 to 20 lb. range accounted for, but this was the most significant dorado action we had seen all summer long. A few wahoo in the area, found in open offshore waters while charters are mainly targeted billfish, Dorado were found off of Red Hill and towards the north of Punta Gorda. Not much inshore action now reported, or even targeted, as this is the time when this action normally phases out for the season, Some local shore anglers did report a few nice sized snook, as well as triple tail, an elusive summer time catch, more active normally in the evening.
On the Iman Bank anglers had chances at hooking into yellowfin tuna while using strips of squid, fish to 50 lb. were landed off of these grounds, larger fish reportedly lost. Though bite has not been consistent at all, was best early in the week, then became much more hit or miss. These same areas produced some cabrilla, broomtail grouper, yellow snapper, barred pargo and dogtooth snapper, not big numbers, but some nice quality fish were accounted for. We are optimistic that the action should improve as this full moon fades, this is the month when we normally find excellent action, especially for quality yellowfin tuna.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 54 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 4 blue marlin,
1 black marlin, 5 striped marlin, 4 wahoo, 19 yellowfin tuna, 46 dorado, 14 leopard grouper (cabrilla), 6 broomtail grouper, 2 pargo colorado,8 huachinango (red snapper), 4 dogtooth snapper,18 yellow snapper, 2 amberjack and 9 barred pargo.
Good fishing, Eric
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GORDO BANKS PANGAS
Eric Brictson / Operator
619 488-1859
Los Cabos (624) 142-1147
e-mail:gordobanks@yahoo.com
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