Southern Baja was full of activity this past week, with the most notable event on the schedule being the 40 th annual running of the Score International Baja 1000 off-road race, which for only the second time in history finished in the city of Cabo San Lucas. Thousands of visitors were greeted with perfect weather conditions, clear skies, with high temperatures in the 80s. The Puerto Los Cabos Marina was now attracting more sport fishers and pleasure yachts, some as large as 100 feet, as several dozen of the larger vessels were moored inside the nearly completed marina. Local panga fleets were in the midst of their busiest time of the year and anglers were enjoying excellent all around catches. Ocean swells were very slight and water temperatures varied from 76 on the Banks off the Pacific to as high as 82 degrees in the direction of the Sea of Cortez, just north of San Jose del Cabo. Live bait supplies were once again plentiful, with a mix of sardinas, caballito and mackerel available, commercial pangueros were now experimenting with new techniques of using lights to attract the sardinas to the surface off of the Puerto Los Cabos jetties during the predawn hours from 4:00 to 5:00 a.m. and have been able to net quantiies of quality sized sardinas.

With the exception of some scattered striped marlin action found off of the Chileno and San Jose del Cabo areas, the main center of billfish activity continues to be found off of the Pacific, particularly on the Golden Gate Bank and north to the Finger Bank. This is where schools of mackerel are now concentrated, enticing the marlin into the feeding mood, charters are accounting for multiple marlin catches of 4,5,6 or 8 fish on a regular basis.

For the San Jose del Cabo fleets the most consistent fishing was found from the Gordo Banks to Iman, with La Fortuna and Iman highlighting the action for the week. The mainstay of the catch was yellowfin tuna that were striking on live sardinas and were weighing in the 10 to 20 pound range, charters had average counts of 8 to 15 tuna per morning. A few larger yellowfin were encountered as well, including one specimen over 100 pounds taken on Friday from a panga while trolling a small sized skipjack for bait. A couple of other big tuna were hooked into while using chunk bait, but these fish were lost due to various reasons, one crazy tuna apparently thought he was a dorado and after feeling the point of the hook it decided to go acrobatic and did a series of spectacular jumps before gaining its freedom.

Dorado counts tapered off slightly, with most of the do-dos being found in the same areas where the yellowfin were encountered, small schools of these colorful fish were attracted by the chummed sardinas, most of the dorado accounted for weighed fifteen pounds or less.

The most exciting fishing news to report was that the elusive wahoo have finally decided to wake up and get into the action. Anglers found good prospects for these speedsters off the La Fortuna, Iman and San Luis reefs. Many of the wahoo were being hooked into on the unconventional method of sardina baits on direct monofilament; surprisingly quite a few were actually landed this way. Of course when anglers switched to using wire leader with the smaller baifish, the weary wahoo did not show any interest. Slow trolling with smaller sized black skipjack on trap hooked rigs also proved to be productive and resulted in some of the larger sized wahoo that were accounted for. The standard array of wahoo lures such as, Marauders, Yo-Zuris, Rapalas and custom rigged skirted lead heads were also accounting for their share of ??hoo strikes. The majority of the wahoo now being landed were weighing in the respectable 30 to 60 pound class.

Other action included limited counts of pargo, amberjack, cabrilla, sierra and grouper. Several larger sized gulf grouper to over 100 pounds were landed by the local commercial panga fleet, using whole tuna and needlefish for bait , rigged with heavy leaders on stout hand lines in order to muscle them away from their sharp rocky caves.

The combined panga fleets from La Playita sent out approximately 196 charters for the week and anglers accounted for a fish count of: 4 striped marlin, 3 sailfish, 5 roosterfish, 11 amberjack, 68 pargo (various species), 23 cabrilla, 26 sierra, 404 dorado, 1,660 yellowfin tuna and 87 wahoo.