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| Brian O'Hara on the Gitana |
As I predicted in my last report, things are getting
back to normal this week. The 80° blue water is only 10 miles off the beach;
with 84° water still pushing northward. The 84° warm water is now out in front
of Vicente Guerrero. It was in front of Acapulco last week, which means it is
moving about 50 miles a week. It will be here next week.
The offshore
fishing this last week has seen a decent improvement also. There are
several boats going out and getting 8-9 strikes on sailfish a day. Dorado are
again in the counts, and lots of football size yellowfin tuna are also showing
from 40 miles on a 240° heading on down to 30 miles on a 180° heading.
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| Brian with one of his four sailfish released |
Early in the week, Dennis Baily and Greg Taylor from
Ohio went out 30 miles with Francisco on the super panga Huntress. They had a nice double on sailfish, which they released,
and lost a couple of others.
Brian O’Hara of Washington DC fished with Santiago on
the super panga Gitana on Wednesday
and released 4 sailfish the first day. The second day they went to the beaches
down by Valentine for jack crevalle and black skipjack on the fly rod. The
third day they went out 45 miles getting 4 small yellowfin tuna on the fly rod
and a 35 pound tuna on live bait.
Francisco on the super panga Huntress also fished on Thursday, and saw the conditions improving
for his Canadianclient over what they experienced with Dennis and Greg last
Sunday. They got 8 strikes on sailfish between 19 and 20 miles, and a strike on
a huge blue marlin at 13 miles. They caught and released 4 sails, with 2
getting off. They had a triple, a double, a single hookup and another double.
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As Abel is about to release this rooster, note the foam from
the heavy surf, and how far off the beach we encountered
the school of roosterfish. |
Inshore action has also improved
as the water is warming up and getting clear again. Dennis and Greg spent a day
with me down at Puerto Vicente Guerrero for roosters. We got there and encountered huge surf, which
proved to be non-productive factor when we started fishing a couple of miles to
the north of the port. We then made the move to around the point and a couple
of miles south. Because the surf was high, the roosters had moved off the
beach. We got into a huge school of roosterfish that had over 200 large fish in
it. They were breaking on the surface like tuna, with the exception the huge
namesake dorsal fin was raised and slashing the water as they chased their prey.
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They were swimming and crashing on bait only a few feet
from the boat |
The first frenzy was the largest, but the
birds told us where they were for the next two hours. We ended up hooking 5
roosters. And, you ask “where are the photos of this incredible experience?”
Well, Dennis and Greg were either trying to catch a rooster or fighting one.
The captain was busy with maneuvering the boat position, and I had a damned
pelican on the lure end of a spin rod. The pelican flew into the line and got
wrapped around the wing and across the back. The frenzy was over in just a
couple of minutes, and it took me that much time to get the pelican close to the
boat to be released unharmed.
Ed Kunze (IGFA Representative)
Another of Ed’s theories: We seem to
only experience large schools of roosters in November and December. They are
fairly much gone from Christmas through May, with June being one of our best
months for roosters. Normally, from June and on into December we catch them in
shallow water off the back side of the waves as they are loosely scattered
along stretches of the beach. The
smaller roosters do cluster in groups of 5 or 6, but the larger fish seem to be
alone or as mating pairs.
By encountering this large school of roosters
this week, was it a migrating school of returning fish? Are the schooled fish
of November and December being pushed down from the north by cold water and
migrating to points south? Basically what I am asking is if large roosters are
more solitary or mating paired fish, but the schools we have seen all have huge
fish in them, do roosterfish school up when they migrate, then disperse into
loose groups after they arrive to the area they call their summer (or winter)home? There is some precedence to
his. In the animal and bird kingdoms, this does happen with several species. I
hope to explore this question a bit more….Especially this coming November and
December.
Or, is it just because the high surf
creates a situation where the roosters have a hard time trapping the bait
against the beach, and they have to school up to trap them in open water?
