Z Fish Report (11/12/10)

It has been kind of a frustrating situation for us out on the water this week. The conditions for the blue water and temperatures are finally coming around to be very favorable. We are seeing lots of bait, birds, and sea turtles, but the fish are not biting.

Sea Turtle sticking his head up to see we are about

One of the reasons is the game fish in the blue water may be feeding on squid down below, with little feeding activity on top. We experienced this yesterday (Thursday) when Mike O’Keefe of London, England and I fly fished down at Puerto Vicente Guerrero. We hadn’t seen a fish, yet alone gotten a strike until about 11:30. Then at 4.5 miles off the beach, and on our way back in to get closer to shore to try for some dorado, all hell broke loose. We were getting one swat strikes on our teaser baits from sailfish, and had sails jumping alongside the boat, swimming into the teaser spread, and jumping out in front. In less than an hour we must have had 10 close encounters, but not a single aggressive strike. Exciting for sure, but frustrating at the same time.

Even the dorado were not biting anything in the trolled spread. There were a couple of local commercial pangas getting a few dorado, but they were drifting and cutting up chunks of black skipjack tuna to establish a chum line.

Sarah Henry of B.C. Canada
with a fly caught barrilate

Inshore fishing has been fairly decent however. Fly fishermen Tom Pelikan and John Steele, members of the Santa Cruz, CA Fly Fishing Club, had a couple of memorable days on the water with Temo on the panga Sequestra Amor. This is what Tom emailed me: Day 1 Wed. 11/10 John caught the largest fish I have ever seen caught on a fly rod, a 25# jack cravalle. It was my 1st day of ocean fly fishing and I made all the rookie mistakes: Getting tangled in the rigging, etc. I had 4 serious hookups, 3 of which I lost because I had problems with line control and wrapped my fly line around the base of the fly reel. And I exploded one of John's fine fly rods when I tried to "lift" a diving Jack. Capt. Temo was very patient and offered appropriate tips.


Day 2, Thurs. 11/11: There was less bait ball action. John landed a nice Bonita and I landed a nice dorado of about 20#. Honestly, landing a Jack Cravalle on a fly rod is like trying to tow a cement truck with a bicycle!!!!!

Ed Kunze