June 18, 2017 
It is starting to feel more like summer with each passing week, though the climate is still very comfortable, high temperature near 90 degrees. Some scattered tropical clouds now appearing, there was a Tropical Storm Calvin last week off of the southern Mexican coast, did bring heavy rainfall to isolated areas, but here in Los Cabos we were not impacted at all from this system. Ocean swells have been light to moderate, water temperature are reaching 78 to 80 degrees in the direction of San Jose del Cabo and to the north, this is also where the clarity of the ocean has been the clearest, attracting more pelagic gamefish.
Just coming off the full moon phase from last week, conditions are settled down in the direction of the Sea of Cortez, though the Pacific has had more wind, with much cooler water temperatures and greener currents, not the deep blue waters being found north of Punta Gorda. Update on water clarity turning green after strong south sinds on Friday, this did slow down the action and now we will wait for conditions to rebound as winds reside.
Bait suppliers are mainly dealing caballito and mullet now, offshore grounds are seeing more bolito move in and some reports of chihuil also being present. All around action showed favorable improvement in recent days, still no huge numbers of any particular species, but always a great sign when we see billfish, yellowfin tuna, wahoo, dorado and roosterfish all being found on a daily basis. Most consistent grounds were from the Iman and San Luis Banks, north to Vinorama, this is where the water is clean and blue, with lots of baitfish schools present, which in turn means that the gamefish have more than enough natural food source to gorge themselves on and are not always hungry and aggressive in striking what anglers offer.
Yellowfin tuna are scattered throughout offshore grounds, though best chance at hooking into a 40 to 60 lb. yellowfin was in the vicinity of San Luis Bank and the bait of choice was either caballito or bolito, either while drift fishing or slow trolling. Other tuna in the 10 to 25 lb. range were randomly striking trolled Rapalas, hoochies, yo-yo jigs, etc. Though the better grade of tuna were striking mainly on the larger live baitfish. Though these fish were limited in numbers, with anglers very fortunate to land one or two of them.
.Inshore action is now dominated by roosterfish, with many fish in the 20 to 60 lb. class landed, as well as a handful of even larger fish reported. A bit sporadic as to where the best action might be found on any given day. Also mixed in are some jack crevalle to over 25 lb., as well as some late season sierra, a few nice sized fish close to ten pounds. Not much reported for inshore dogtooth snapper or amberjack, we are expected this annual bite to start up anytime, with schooling mullet now found along the shore line, this attracts larger gamefish.
The highlight of the week has to be the dorado action, after seeing very few of these popular gamefish for months, this week we finally saw more significant numbers, especially later in the week around the same San Luis and Iman Bank areas. Many charters were accounting for three or four dorado per outing, which would have been unheard of during previous weeks. Sizes were respectable as well, most of these dorado were in the 10 to 17 lb. range. These fish were striking best on slow trolled baits, but a percentage were also taken on lures. Wahoo are becoming more active as well, with many fish cutting mono leaders used while targeting tuna, some wahoo to 30 lb. were landed on caballito, as well as trolled Rapalas, many more wahoo were actually missed than were caught.
The main concentration of striped marlin was found around the 1150 spot further offshore, though marlin were also encountered near San Luis and Iman Banks on some days. Also there were a couple of reports of swordfish sightings further offshore as well.
The combined panga fleets launching out of La Playita, Puerto Los Cabos Marina sent out approximately 77 charters for the week, with anglers reporting a fish count of: 8 striped marlin, 16 wahoo, 68 dorado, 3 amberjack, 5 pompano, 28 bonito, 58 yellowfin tuna, 14 yellow snapper, 12 barred pargo, 15 leopard grouper, 34 huachinango, 18 jack crevalle, 75 roosterfish, 22 sierra and 65 triggerfish.
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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