Welcome to The Baja Fish Blog, your blog for Southern Baja fishing reports covering the East Cape, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas. We will also be posting on-the-water reports, photos, videos, gear reviews and tackle tips.
Just in from Eddie Dalmau of Van Wormer Resorts...
This giant 114lb. wahoo was landed today by the Borracho y Amigos (Captain
Oscar Verdugo) out of Hotel Palmas De Cortez. It the boat and Captain
sound familiar it’s because it is the same boat that won the 2012 Dorado Shoot
Out. It truly is the year of the Borracho!
The wahoo was caught just north of Palmas De Cortez near El Cardinal and
Punta Pescadero. It was hooked on a ballyhoo which they were trolling
looking for Dorado. They actually hooked 4 wahoo, but this was the only
one that did not bite himself off.
For those of you not familiar with Japanese Gyotaku fish prints,
Gyotaku (Japanese, from gyo "fish" + taku "rubbing") is a traditional form of Japanese fish printing or rubbing, dating from the mid-19th century, a form of nature printing used by fishermen to record their catches. In order to make a gyotaku print, one places the subject (e.g. fish, crab, scallop shell) on a wooden bench and paints one side with sumi ink. Next a piece of paper or other material is laid over the ink-covered fish. Finally, one rubs the material until there is the image of the fish on it.
Modern gyotaku artists often substitute acrylic or other painting material for the traditional sumi-e,
Here is a video on Okinawa Gyotaku fish prints:
Lyle Brunson takes Gyotaku prints to the next level with his expertise in large game fish prints like marlin, sailfish, tuna, dorado, wahoo and roosterfish. He designs each print to the customer's preferences. You can go with just black ink for that traditional look, a light wash of color for billfish or something more colorful for species like dorado (mahi mahi). I can attest to Lyles skill and attention to detail, as my clients have been overwhelmed by the quality, artistry and craftsmanship of his prints. One other benefit to a fish print is you can fold in up and put it in a suitcase for the trip home. When you get home you can mount your print by following Lyle's detailed mounting directions...done. No waiting for two months for that fiberglass mount. Lyle's work really speaks for itself and I highly recommend his work.
We had some crazy weather last week with tropical cyclone Norman pushing up into the Sea of Cortez on Wednesday. Rain storms were sporatic and considerable at times during the week. As the storm made landfall on the mainland on Friday, we had some of the largest waves I have ever seen hit the beaches of Buena Vista and Los Barriles. These were big shore break waves that looked more like Sandy's Beach or Makapu'u in Oahu, Hawaii than the East Cape. The system moved out on Saturday and it was back to sunshine and beautiful blue greasy calm water ranging from 85-88 degrees. Fortunately, the 6th Annual Casting for Soles shoe/t-shirt give-a-way saw sunshine and blue skies. This was my first year volunteering for this event and it went smooth as silk with Eddie Dalmau managing crowd control and Jack McCulloch's team sizing and distributing shoes from New Balance and Clark's to more than 2000 locals in the East Cape. The giveaway also included shirts, hats and sandals from AFTCO and eyeglasses for those in need.
Fishing was a mixed bag of dorado and stripers/sails from La Ribera down to Los Frailes. There have been big schools of skipjack off of La Ribera and slow trolling skipjack strip baits has been the ticket for the dorado. We've also had some blue marlin following the skipjack schools. Also, boats ran out 30+ miles North and found wide open tuna up to 50#. It's been hit and miss on the tuna with a few 100+ tuna being landed on the dolphin pods offshore from Los Frailes. Inshore we are still seeing rooster to 30#, and some nice pargo.
Christie Shedd with a dorado caught off of Punta Arena.
Bill and Christie Shedd with a nice pargo landed at the Cabo Riviera breakwater.
Kirk Vetor from Newtonville, Ontario with an estimated 200# blue marlin (expired in fight).
He was spooled by an estimated 400# blue marlin the next day.
Big bull dorado caught by Jim Packard, Las Vegas, Nevada.
The week started out slow with not too many fish landed on Saturday,
Sunday and Monday, but we finished very strong. Lots of tuna and dorado
were caught by guests of Palmas De Cortez and Playa Del Sol the last
three days. The great news is that the tuna have moved in closer and
they are now only 5-10 miles south, southeast out from Palmas De Cortez.
Most of the tuna were football size with a few reaching up to 35lbs.
The dorado bite has improved quite a bit as well, with anglers landing
dorado in the 30-50lb. range. The dorado have been to the south and
north of the hotel, so it is pretty much wide open for tuna and dorado
right now. With most anglers hitting the nearby tuna and dorado, not too
many marlin have been landed. The El Tio landed a 150lb. striped marlin
as it was coming into dock. The cruiser was inside the boat line, in
between two boats that were anchored, when they spotted the fin. The
hooked the fish and everyone on the dock watched as they fought the
marlin for about 30 minutes. This was something you don't see every day.
Anyway, that's it from down here on the East Cape. Don't forget about
our September specials going on right now. Call 877-777-8862 for more
details.
I met Jessica at the Fred Hall Sportfishing show in Long Beach, CA. She
showed me the Scentblazer product line and I was immediately interested
in their teaser design. I'm a big fan of large teasers and I think they
raise fish, period. I was also very interested because over the past
eight or ten years I had built similar teasers out of PVC pipe, mylar
tape, vinyl skirts. Basically, fancy chum tubes for trolling. The
Scentblazer teaser for fit and finish made my teasers look crude in
comparison. Their teaser is your classic bowling pin shape but with a
two piece, polycarbonate body with a hollow bait chamber and large open
grate at the back of the teaser.
I rigged two of them up with about four
feet of 650lb. Momoi Xhard leader and loaded them up with bait. The
bait chamber worked perfectly with our local bullet and frigate tuna.
You simply unscrew the head of the teaser, load your chum into the body
and screw the two pieces together. We would remove the head (behind the
pectoral fins) and tail, gut the bait, cut crosshatch slices in the body
of the bait on both sides and insert into the teaser. The one detail I
really liked about this teaser, unlike others on the market, was the
fact that I could control the action of the teaser by adding or removing
chum from the chamber. Less chum equaled more action. The teaser would
buck, skitter on the surface and dive with a really erratic action with
less chum. If it was packed down with bait, it would push lots of water
throwing a huge smoke trail, head shake and still dig in even when the
wind would come up in the afternoon. We've raised a couple blues on them
this Summer but I think we are definitely going to raise some more this
Fall.
