Fish Reports: Z Fish Report (2/20/15)

Sailfish doing its thing when caught on the fly rod

The offshore fishing as really slowed down. One or two sailfish a day per boat is about it, with many boats not catching any, or only hooking up with 1.

The tuna did a surprise showing, and at only 15 miles. Only a couple of boats got in on the action, and then the tuna went down. Don’t get too excited about the prospects of a tuna bite. They breezed in, and then promptly breezed out.

Santiago of the panga Gitana with a nice yellowfin tuna

Rebecca Harbath with a very nice rooster

Andy Harbath's rooster was just a bit smaller than Rebecca's

The inshore has a lot of sierra and jack crevalle, and we took a few roosters this week, which was a very pleasant surprise. Cheva on the pamga Dos Hermanos II took a couple in the Petatlan area. Adolfo, on the panga Dos Hermanos has been working the Ranch and areas up north, picking up a couple of smaller sized roosters, lots of jack crevalle and sierras every day. Adolfo Jr. and I went to Puerto Vicente three days this week tagging and releasing 7 nice roosters, with one of them caught with the fly rod (which translates to many roosters were missed, but would have been taken using conventional gear).

Adolfo Jr. holding Phil Barker's fly caught rooster. Notice the tag

Lisa Stegenga with her first rooster

Early in the week we had to fight wind, which gave a different twist to the old saying… “It was a poor day for fishing, but a great day of catching”.

Andy and Rebecca Harbath of Wisconsin, Adolfo Jr., and I made the 1½ drive from Zihuatanejo down to Puerto Vicente Guerrero. We fished for about two hours on the back side of the waves with little to show for it. Spotting some birds working about 200 yards off the beach, but no breaking fish, we went over to investigate. And, the wind was starting to pick up.

We immediately realized we had stumbled into a school of roosters, with several follows and missed hookups on the surface poppers from both sides of the boat. In about 5 minutes we had a solid hookup. During the fight the wind drifted us down the beach, and after making the tag and release, we slowly made our way back uphill against the wind and building waves. After two more repeat performances for tagged fish, I called it a day. It was just too dangerous and too easy to get sidewise to the 6 foot wind waves while fighting a fish.

We left a huge school of roosters in a full blown feed mode, but that’s fishing.