Z Fish Report (2/1/18)

Most good captains  make their own luck, but sometimes, they get lucky too.
Here is Adolfo.on the panga Dos Hermanos, with a  250 pound black marlin.
The  marlin ate a trolled  goggleye  on a spin rod.
They were looking for sailfish or dorado. The black inhaled the bait, and
 blocked his ability to breath. Twenty minutes later the marlin was along side the panga. 

Offshore (average) surface water temperature - Includes from the 5-6 mile mark at the 100 fathom line, then to the 1,000 fathom line being at 32 miles: 85°

Inshore (average) surface temperature. From the beach to about 5 miles: 85°

Blue water: (Chlorophyll amounts and surface temps from Terrafin SST) Blue water is almost all the way to the beach up and down the coast. See the below satellite photo. (The white areas are cloud cover).

Offshore: Sailfish action has slowed to one or two fish a day per boat, and should hold up through the full moon period this next week.

Decent sized dorado are still showing up in the counts for both offshore and onshore.

Another incredible catch on a spin rod., taken by Brain
Hetland of  North Dakota. This fish took 5 hours to subdue,
With Brian on the rod the entire time.

The yellowfin tuna are now a hit or miss situation, with the best action early in the week. Yesterday (Wednesday) a tuna seiner has moved into the area and is taking a lot of them. But, the separate schools pop up and are still giving action if you are in the right place and time.

Brian Hetland , fishing with a trolled fly on his spin rod, for this nice wahoo
at daybreak  just out of Zihuatanejo Bay. 

 Inshore: It is spotty at best. There are lots of sierras a few hundred yards off the beach, as well as lots of black skipjack tuna (called bonitos by the captains here). Roosters and jack crevalle are only coming to the captains willing to spend the gas money and look for the off-colored water.

Adolfo found some action for a rooster in the off colored water at Pantla.

And, we had a day of very high waves, which shut down the inshore action for many boats.

Jeff Burbank, from Min. fished with Cheva and only found this nice
 dorado on the inshore for two days of hard casting.

Above and below is Rod Anderson  of Vancouver, B.C. And Greg  Corrardo
from Seattle. Fishing with Mark Denison  out of Puerto Vicente Guerrero, they
got the above rainbow runner, and the below large jack crevalle. But, the jack
took the  lure out of the mouth of he huge rooster . Incredible.

Mark Denison, fishing from the beach in front of his fishing lodge at La Barrita, caught 16 smaller sized jack crevalle in just a couple of hours of spin casting, then he rested up, and went back out in the afternoon. He told me the hard part was to not get the line fouled by the pelicans and birds crashing on the sardines. The water clarity was perfect, and there were thousands of game fish concentrating on the sardine bait. It was basically a fish on with every cast, if the line didn’t get fouled by the diving birds.

The jack crevalle were small, about 3 to 6 pounds, but this smaller size is desired by the locals. The heavy oils have yet to get into the meat when the jacks are young. Mark solidified his status at La Barrita by tossing about 30 jacks up on the beach, and a couple of 5 foot long needlefish. The locales were there waiting, and ate well that night.     

Ed Kunze                                                               

 (Director of the Roosterfish Foundation, IGFA Representative)