The light crowds of tourists that are now traveling to southern Baja have been greeted with cooler than usual weather, mostly clear skies, but high temperatures that are barely reaching the mid 70s and early morning it has been chilly enough where you need to bundle up. The north winds have been becoming more troublesome, picking up by mid morning to anywhere from 8 to 20 miles per hour. This cooling trend has attributed to the ocean temperature also dropping down to an average in the lower 70s and has sent most of the tropical gamefish species on their annual migration further south. Warmest water the past week was found from Chileno to the Golden Gate.

Starting on last Monday, anglers encountered a whole different scenario than in previous weeks when they were catching easy limits of yellowfin tuna. The live sardinas have remained plentiful, but getting the tuna to come up and feed in the areas of Iman, Punta Gorda and Palmilla where they had been so abundant has been nearly impossible. Only a handful of tuna were being hooked into, still in the range of 10 to 20 pounds and this has the sportfishing fleet scattering looking for other action. A few dorado were found here or there, medium sized fish, 10 to 20 pounds. Sierra are now moving in along the shoreline, but this first migration of fish has consisted mainly of juveniles, fun for small children, but it is best to let them grow up some, as they are averaging two pounds or less. Lots of roosterfish and jack crevalle as well, five pound average, a few larger fish mixed in.

Off the bottom anglers found limited action for various pargos, amberjack and cabrilla, one amberjack weighing close to 50 pound was reported, most of the other bottom species now being landed have been in the 4 to12 pound class.

The striped marlin bite has continued on the Pacific, now moving within range of the smaller sized charter boats, off of El Faro. Best action has been drifting with live bait or throwing baits to tailing fish on the surface.

The panga fleets out of La Playita sent out approximately 43 charters for the week and anglers accounted for a fish count of: 5 striped marlin, 222 sierra, 29 amberjack, 55 pargo, 14 cabrilla, 28 bonito, 48 dorado and 33 yellowfin tuna.