Z Fish Report (5/16/13)

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.

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.

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.

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?