Fish Reports: Z Fish Report (1/3/14)

Kym Petry on the Aqua Azul

The 85° blue water is about 5 miles off the beach and following the 100 fathom curve for most of the coast. From Petatlan and points south, the blue water is on the beach. We have been experiencing good overall fishing.

David Marsh and his wife on the Super panga
Gitana. They got David's fish in first, and spotted
the bull close by. Quick thing and a tossed bait
ended up with the double.

Offshore – We are still averaging 2 to 3 sailfish a day per boat, and a nice 15 to 20 pound dorado or two per boat.

Mike Garrett on the Aqua Azul

Some notable catches this week were made by Jeff Witt and family (Oakland, CA) fishing with Chiro on the cruiser Bloody Hook with 4 sailfish. John and Fred Neudorf of Alberta fished with their two sons and released 5 sailfish on the cruiser Orion, with Jamie Morales at the helm. And, Mike Garrett of Arkansas, with fishing partners Bruce and Kym Petry, fished with Mecate on the Aqua Azul for 3 sails and a couple of dorado.

Arron Nir and his kids with a nice dorado on the super panga Gitana with
Santiago. They also released a sailfish.

Chase Anderson (right) and his brother Dustin, with
the dorado that spooled them last week while fishing
with Adolfo on the panga Dos Hermanos

The inshore action did slow down for the jack crevalle and sierras, which have been our mainstay since the roosterfish have mostly left. That is for most of us, with exception being Adolfo on the panga Dos Hermanos. He has had a couple of days where he did not find fish, but he is not considered to be one of the absolute best by letting an off day or two deter him.

Fishing 5 days straight with his French client, he has somehow managed to locate migrating schools of roosterfish, being pushed down from the cold water up north, and has logged 23 roosters in the 4 days they were inshore. The roosters were all over the board as far as weights; from 20 pounds to 45 pounds. He finds them by watching for breaking fish, and goes over to investigate. Sometimes it is just black skipjack, and sometimes it is sierras, but on 4 occasions it was roosterfish breaking on bait and about a half mile off shore

He told me the first school he came up on Monday was huge, with roosters of all sizes mixed in. They were hooked up with a double and he was sitting back and observing. He told me he saw a couple of roosters go under the boat “and they were as big as a porpoise”. He tried an estimate and figures about 60 kilos each (130 pounds). Remember, Adolfo has logged 4 roosterfish over 100 pounds, and the one at 108 pounds is a line class world record. He said the two fish he saw were larger, with a third one of about 100 pounds.

Kym's 1st rooster was just slightly larger than her husband's
We got them down at Puerto Vicente Guerrero

For the Roosterfish Foundation, those schooled roosters are interesting as far as migration data, especially being of all mixed sizes. It certainly is data which will be documented, and hopefully we get a chance to study it more. And, it raises another question. It appears the roosters are pushed down from the north by cold water moving in. So, if the migrating schools of fish have different sizes mixed in, is the migration pure instinct, or a learned pattern?