Z Fish Report (1/10/13)

Aboard the super panga Huntress for Mattie's Dad

The 82 degree blue water is still around the 6 mile mark and basically following the 100 fathom line. And the fishing has turned up the volume.

The offshore fishing boats are averaging about 3 to 4 sailfish a day each, with several boats doing way better, and actually averaging about 5-6 fish a day. Plus, the dorado are showing again. Remember, these are not young school sized fish of 4 to 8 pounds. These are mature pairs, who break off from the school fish, and are averaging over 20 pounds each. They are harder to find and usually come only on blind strikes, but a couple of 20 pound class dorado yields a lot of excellent fillets.

I took this photo of Les Gato's dorado off the transom
engine cover last week

How good is the sailfish fishing? Joanne Rydzewski and her husband went out with Capt. Elias on the Had E Nuff for what was supposed to be a pleasant afternoon and evening sunset cruise. They didn’t even leave the dock until the “bite” was over. After enjoying a great sunset, they had also previously caught 3 sailfish and a dorado.


Mattie's 1st fish with Francisco on the super panga Huntress 

From Oregon, 8 year old Mattie Rynders caught her first fish, while her Dad caught and released 6 sailfish in one day aboard the super panga Huntress with Capt. Francisco.

Adan and Christopher Gist  with one of his 3 sailfish. Note the
tag for the release. They were on the super panga Gitana.

Plus, the super panga Gitana, with Santiago and his brother Adan as deckhand, had the clients and the fish this week. Carl Taylor from Los Angeles fished 2 days offshore and 2 days inshore, releasing 7 sailfish and landing 3 dorado. Inshore they got 5 roosterfish, 2 large jack crevalle, 4 large sierras, and a 12 pound pompano (which is a huge pompano).

1 of 3 of Christopher's 3 dorado. Note the wild shorts on both.

Today (Thursday) with Santiago and Adan, Christopher Gist of Poway, California tagged and released 3 sailfish and got 3 dorado.

On the municipal pier this morning, when I was talking to Cheva’s son Annibel, of the cruiser Ducessa III, yesterday they had caught 6 sailfish and 3 dorado.

The inshore action for roosterfish has slacked off a bit, but this is a normal seasonal occurrence. They will be back in numbers again in June. There are still a few around, but to fill the gap is the hard fighting jack crevalle come on strong from now on through May.

Don Grantges, who has a condo here, just called me as I was about to post this report. He, his wife, and friends are at Barra Potosi having a great seafood dinner at one of the several palapa restaurants there. Plus, he always takes his spin rod (just in case). As it turned out he told me there is tonnage of sardines on the beach and he got a small 5 pound jack crevalle on a Mega Bait. We feel the bigger game fish will soon follow.

Today (Thursday) fly fishing client Knute Olsen of Montana went down to Puerto Vicente Guerrero with Adolfo Jr. and I. It was a long run and we had put all of our eggs in one basket. We were fishing a remote offshore underwater sea mount which comes up to within 25 feet of the surface. There were fish everywhere and we knew we had made the right choice. From several points of the compass we had schools of black skipjack tuna, sierras, and green jacks crashing the surface, schools of decent sized pampano were crusing under the boat, with huge jack crevalle breezing through. It was going to be a great day.

This was Knute’s first time salt water fly fishing with a 10 wt rod, so it was a learning curve. Adolfo teased several large jacks to the boat, but the timing of the fly hitting the water was a bit off. About the same time it all came together for Knute, a huge humpback whale surfaced about 30 feet from the boat. It apparently thought this was a great fishery too. The game fish took off and it was soon like a desert, but we stayed around an hour to wait it out. The whale continued to feed, and that was how we left the situation.

Ed Kunze (IGFA Representative)
For a better understanding of our seasons and species of fish here in Ixtapa /Zihuatanejo, please click on the link to my web site and scroll down on the left side bar for “Calendar”… http://www.sportfishing-ixtapa.com/index.html