La Paz Fishing Report / June 27th 2021
Fish Talk
I normally start my report talking about the weather and water conditions, bait and tourists things like that.
This week let’s try something different and open with fishing.
The best way to start I guess is to say fishing isn’t off the charts but for June it’s pretty damn good. The variety of fish is mind boggling. In my 13 years of living in La Paz I have never seen so many different species caught in a single week.
Inshore, the rooster fish are still cruising up and down the beaches. Slow trolling macs or cabs or site casting swim baits or fly rods are sticking fish up to 40 lbs. Off the rocky slides around the island, small to medium size pargo and cabrilla are on the chew. The fish that comes out of the shallows are the perfect size and most tender of their species.
Fishing the seamounts you are almost guaranteed fish, what species well that’s a little up in the air. Up top the bait is thick with Bolitos and Chihuil. These are the preferred baits for the strip Marlin and they are thick. We actually had guest pulling lures out of the water as the strippers were in pursuit. They had had enough. If you’re looking for billfish it’s just nuts. Trolling lures, live bait throwing poppers we even got one on a cedar plug.
In the deeper waters on the mounts it’s a mixed bag. Cubera snapper, Cabrilla, Almaco Jacks, Pargo Colorado and yellow. This is definitely late season for moss backs a big bonus.
On your way out to either Espíritu Santos or Cerralvo follow the current lines. The sargasso paddies are still floating around. Between the fisherman chumming and the flying fish spawning in these paddies are holding Dorado up to 40lbs. Paddy hopping and buoys will get you your limits in short order. You can easily find the fish by following the birds.
Our spearfishing groups did real well up north on a multi day trip on our Riviera 43′. They fished around a few different island and the south reef for Huge Cubera, AJ’s, yellowtail and grouper. These guys are regulars with us from the east coast so a big thanks for coming down and hanging out with us.
Offshore fishing is still hit or miss. Again striped Marlin are offshore feeding on the flying fish. As on the seamounts the Marlin are thick as thieves. Light tackle fishing these Marlin are about as fun as fishing gets.
Further out there a large schools of porpoise holding tuna. If you find them it’s a tug fest. The problem is it’s like throwing darts. You pick a direction and go. It’s best when there’s no wind, making it easier to spot the porpoise. Some schools are running mixed size in the 30-50lb class and others much smaller. Having a couple different baits is a plus. We metered the tuna at 60 ft under the porpoise so running deep diving swim baits like Marauders or chunking squid out in front of the schools did the trick. The hard part is finding them. Currently there are a lot of fish south of us just out of range for day trips. If the water continues to favorable they should continue to move North making it possible for us to get to.
Weather & Bait
The conditions are improving. Water temperature were 86 degrees offshore and 81 inshore and clear blue. The winds have been pretty typical, with morning coromuels, ‘southwest’ 7-10 knots lying down in late morning to almost nothing. Unfortunately we have a storm down south, Enrique. This doesn’t look like it’s going to be a strong storm but could possibly push cold water up the Gulf changing the conditions. We have to wait and see.
It looks like Cabo will get the worst of it by Wednesday or Thursday. Like I said it doesn’t look strong and will probably be down graded to a tropical storm by then.
That about wraps it up for the week.
Until next time be safe and kind.
Keep the faith
Scotto.
