WOW!

That just about sums up our trip to the VanWormer Resorts and Hotel Palmas De Cortez. A group of 5 of us just came back from a 4 night stay Sunday night from Hotel Palmas De Cortez and had the time of our lives.

Just a few short hours from LAX and we were in paradise with a cold drink in our hands looking out at a flat calm Sea of Cortez with temperatures near 80 degrees, and talking about what our fishing day may bring to us the next day. The excitement built even more as we were on our patio watching quite a show of fish boiling just a few yards off the beach.

A nice relaxing day but day two was a bit different. We headed down to our boat not knowing what the day would bring. Things started out pretty bleak but the day was still awesome with whales, dolphin, manta rays, and more jumping out of the water. Then we spotted a marlin jumping off our bow. The Captain gunned the engines to get in front of it, tossed a bait and Elissa Mak was hooked up for her first marlin and the ride of her life. Not something she or I will forget for the rest of our lives.

After Elissa decked her fish it wasn't long before we had another hook up. It was little Amei Friedman's turn in the chair. By the way, her first time fishing and weighing in at just 95 pounds. Not only was it a hook up but a double hook up. So Amei and myself did the old marlin shuffle for about 20 minutes till both of us brought our first ever to the boat. The fish weighed in at 130 to 150 pounds and what a rush it was for someone who has never done anything like this before. We headed back to the dock early so we could enjoy the rest of the day relaxing around the pool.

For our second day of fishing we were tired and sore from the day before so we asked our captain to just look around for dorado and sierra. We had no luck as it was a slow day for the fleet on the dorado but there were plenty of marlin flags a flying.

Palmas de Cortez is a great place to be and you know its home of Fiesta de 976-TUNA in May. We had a great time and it was even better being there with some good friends. Bring the wife or girlfriend even if she doesn't fish as there is plenty for them to do when the guys are out fishing.

It's more than just a fishing trip. Snorkeling, spa, relaxing, ATV, zip lines, great food in town, and so much more.

Good times - Good friends - Good fishing

Give us a call at 562-352-0012 or 310- 328-8426 and book with us today.

See you all Thursday night at Nationals in Torrance and I'll be there to answer any questions you may have.

CLICK HERE for all the Photos

It's Lobster Season in Rosarito Beach!

New Year 2010 enjoy a tasty lobster and margaritas! Visit Rosarito Beach, the great tourist town a scenic 20 miles south of the border. This is one of the lobster hot spots of the world. The famous Puerto Nuevo Lobster Village is here and many restaurants along the 20 miles of coastline prepare the tasty crustacean in various delicious ways. However you like your lobster, please join us during Fresh Lobster Season.

Marlin: 
 
These have not been the best choice to target as the success rate for those looking for a trophy fish have been low.  There have been fish spotted but very few have been brought to the boat this week.  The few that have been caught have been hooked on live bait, very few were caught on lures, and most of them were found on the Cortez side of the Cape.  These are Striped Marlin I am talking about.  I did not hear of any other species of Marlin being caught this week.
 
Yellowfin Tuna:
 
Another scarce species this week, the Tuna that have been found were mostly football sized fish up to 20 pounds and it was a long run south, sometimes 40 miles, to get to the fish.  There were plenty of schools of Porpoise to check out, but few of them had Tuna.  A few boats were able to score fish closer to home, also to the south but we are talking about one or two fish per boat.  At the end of the week I heard that there had been some fish show up in the area of the Gorda Banks.

Another fabulous fun fishing week at Puerto Morelos that produced excellent results for the 19 fishing days reported.  Overall catches reflected 1 sailfish, 20 king mackerel, 11 Atlantic barracuda, 9 red snapper, 26 grouper, 29 bonito, 2 amberjack, 13 triggerfish and 1 sierra.  According to Armando Gutierrez, this area is becoming famous for its wide variety of game fish that has become notable fun for the entire family.

PM Climate:  Partly cloudy days with possible rain for Saturday. Temps are 63 nights to 84 daytime highs.

Sea Conditions:  light tropical breezes but expected to pick up to 20 knots on Saturday.  Temps holding stable at 80 degrees.

Best Bait:  Continues to be the rigged and un-rigged ballyhoo.

According to Captain Temo Verboonen, the blue water moved within 7 miles off the entrance to Zihuatanejo Bay and the billfish came right in with it and the full moon had no effect on the bite. In fact, he mentioned that the bite was better than it had been over the dark of the moon, which is unusual. The early bite remains best, especially during the first 3 hours or so and then the fish seem to go deep and showing up as sporadic feeders. Still a good showing of dorado close in and around the rocks and some 60 lb. yelowfin tuna showing up in the offshore waters at about 30 miles. The inshore bite remains very good for the jack cravelle, bonitos and sierra, and the grouper have been biting the rapalas close to the rocks. Overall, it's been good fishing both inshore and offshore.

IZ Climate:  Partly cloudy days with rain today but clearing and mostly sunny for the weekend.  Temps at 68 nights to 88 daytime highs.

Sea Conditions:  Mostly calm and stable water temps that are holding at 83 inshore and rising to 86 offshore.

Best Fishing area:  Out to about 7 miles, the dorado, jack cravelle, bonitos and sierra.  Sailfish beginning at about 7 miles and on out to 14-15 miles and the yellowfin tuna at about 30 miles.

Best Bait/Lures:  Sailfish have been pretty eager on the rigged baits.  The inshore fish, especially the dorado & jack cravelle, have been hot on live bait and pencil poppers.  Tuna taken on the feathers and live bait.

Bait Supply:  Remains very consistent in this area

The inshore fishing at Mazatlan continues to be more productive than the offshore action and the reasons continue to be unexplainable. Water temps, clarity and feed biomass all seem to be in good order but the area has lacked in good offshore fishing for the past 30 days or more. Overall offshore catches for 22 combined fishing days reflected 2 sailfish, 10 dorado and 3 yellowfin tuna. The six inshore fishing days produced 2 corvina, 46 pargo, 64 cochitos, 39 mojarres and 1 toro.

Mazatlan Climate:  Partly cloudy days in early week and moving into a sunshine weekend with temps ranging from 52 nights to 83 daytime highs.

Sea Conditions:  Continue to be favorable with good water temps & clarity, but lacking in fish.  Temps are holding stable at 77 inshore and rising to 78 offshore.

Best Fishing Area:  No specific are is noted as there has been no fish concentration for this area.

Best Bait/Lure:  Rigged mullet were the bait of choice for the sailfish and dorado in the offshore waters and squid and shrimp were working best for the inshore fishing.

Another difficult billfish catching week week and even the dorado counts fell off with the full moon phase. Throw in about 10 hours of hard rain on Tuesday and one could say it just isn't the way it's supposed to be when fishing from Cabo San Lucas at this time of year. The lack of fish has perpetuated into a lack of anglers and boats fishing. The overall fish counts for the offshore areas for 19 combined fishing days reflected 2 stripers released, 28 yellowfin tuna, 6 skipjack tuna, 37 dorado, 29 yellowtail and 42 sierra

Cabo Climate:  From a very rainy Tuesday (10 hours of rain) to mostly sunny and warm by the weekend with temps from 57 nights to 79 daytime highs.

Sea Conditions:  Falling on the Pacific with temps from the Finger Bank to Cabo Falso at 72 and then rising to 73-74 by the Gorda Banks area.

Best Fishing Area:  The boats are starting to search wider areas as no concentration of fish were showing up in the normal Pacific side area.

Best Bait/Lure:  Live bait was best for the 2 stripers and dorado and for the yellowtail.  Most of the tuna were taken on feathers & cedar plugs.

Live Bait Supply:  Remained good through the full moon, but mostly caballitos.

The World Famous EL BUDSTER goes out fishing again. The results are the same. NO FISH. Very few of the boats fishing out of Cabo right now are catching anything. According to Salvador Ocampo. A lot of bait is around the Cabo area right now. There are big schools of Squid and Sardines which the fish are feeding on.

The rain front that had been predicted to arrive over last weekend did finally arrive on Tuesday and throughout the day left steady rainfall over a wide portion of Southern Baja. Enough to mess the roads up and put the cleanup crews into overtime action. Unusual to receive rain fall in this area during mid winter, so this was a welcome bonus for the local landscape. Skies are now mostly clear with scattered clouds and high temperatures are reaching the mid to upper 70s. Water temperatures have fluctuated from 70 to 75 degrees, in recent days as the variable winds weakened, the ocean temperatures returned with a slight warming trend. Outside of the Gordo Banks, towards the Cabrillo Sea Mount there was a current line of about 77 degrees.

Anglers were finding a variety of live bait available on most days, sardinas, caballito and some mackerel. Sardinetas were also found and have been productive baits, rigged up dead with trap hooks. Dorado were the main species striking these baits, but also a few wahoo and striped marlin are being attracted. Dorado are being found in small schools, sizes ranging from 5 to 25 pounds, most charters were landing two to four of them per morning. Currents have been swift, causing rapidly fluctuating clarity, not uncommon to see murky green water turn blue in a matter of a couple of hours, this has affected the fishing action accordingly.

With water temperatures running warmer than normal, fleets are continuing to have better results for offshore surface species, rather than bottom dwellers, which have not been consistent. Most charters are targeting dorado, yellowfin tuna, striped marlin, wahoo, with maybe some brief inshore trolling and bottom drops added as an option. The majority of the more consistent fishing action has been found within five miles of shore. Anglers using live sardinas for bait along the shoreline have found scattered action for sierra and a few smaller sized roosterfish.

Early in the week there were some yellowfin tuna of 40 to150 pounds found on the Gordo Banks, these fish hit on chunk baits and sardinas, most of the time later in the day, only a handful of them were brought in, but enough to say that these nicer grade tuna are still in the area. Other tuna were located schooling with porpoise, ranging from footballs to over 100 pounds, on some days these yellowfin did hit live sardinas, most of these biters being fish in the 10 to 20 pound class, but other times when the larger sized tuna were seen breezing among porpoise on the surface anglers were not even able to entice a strike. That can be a common trait of yellowfin, if they do not feel like striking a certain offering at a particular time then anglers will simple have to rely on some old fashioned luck.
 
Wahoo action had been very good early last week, then south winds shut that action down, now in recent days as the winds have quieted some, the wahoo have again become more active, Chileno Bay, Palmilla Point and the Gordo Banks all had reports of wahoo being encountered, particularly early in the day, at first light before the congregation of charter boats arrived. The wahoo were striking on rigged ballyhoo, mackerel, sadinetas, sardinas, yo-yo jigs, Yo-Zuri, Rapala and skirted lead heads. The wahoo that were accounted for had mostly been juvenile fish under 20 pounds, but this past week a group of larger fish moved into this region and some wahoo of 30 to 50 pounds were landed.

The combined panga fleets launching from La Playita/Puerto Los Cabos sent out approximately 75 charters for the past week, with anglers accounting for a fish count of:
2 sailfish, 8 striped marlin, 4 hammerhead shark, 5 mako shark, 29 bonito, 68 yellowfin tuna, 146 dorado, 16 wahoo, 104 sierra, 14 roosterfish, 10 amberjack, 13 cabrilla, 2 yellowtail and 48 miscellaneous pargo species.
 
Good fishing, Eric

The World Famous EL BUDSTER goes fishing today. But does not catch anything. They see a number of STRIPED MARLIN. But are unable to get any to bite. They fished out of Cabo about 15 miles and over by the Lighthouse Reef.

NICE YELLOWFIN TUNA WITHIN OUR RANGE !!!! Just another sunny and warm day around the Baja peninsula.....a cool start with temps in the low 60s. The schools of Yellowfin Tuna feeding under porpoise got close enough to the beach for our great 31ft. Albemarle "RAMROD" to put out the cedar plugs and put 4 nice Yellowfin Tuna close to 40 lbs. in the boat. Another 10 smaller fish were released by owners Rod & Barbara Keller and their friends. Total fleet production was 2 Striped Marlin (released), 3 Dorado, 1 Mako Shark, 24 Yellowfin Tuna & 8 Sierra Mackerel. After a hard rain on Tuesday the fishing continues to be spotty but our guys as usual are able to find the fish.

Beautiful everything as Richie is pumped up and 3 marlin today to boot. they are having a great time down there. Listen in live to Richie just after he caught his first marlin click Richie is live from Palmas de Cortez now and listen in live.

Better yet get on down to Palmas de Cortez Champion of The East Cape

May 2nd to May7th 2010
6 DAYS - 5 NIGHTS - 2 DAYS FISHING
Do you have what it Takes to be the Champion?
4 Angler Packages From $550.00 an Angler

3 Angler Packages From $650.00 an Angler

2 Angler Packages From $850.00 an Angler

Room, Food, Tax, And Fishing all included.

Group Discounts are available.
Call 562-352-0012 now and book.

   A 3.7 magnitude earthquake was felt just after 6 PM Wednesday centered in the Pacific Ocean near Rosarito Beach. No reports of any damage.

BILLFISH: This week was on the slow side for marlin, with just 28% of charters catching stripers from 110-150 pounds, nevertheless boats were able to pick up other species, resulting in an overall catch rate of 86% for all species combined.

On Jan. 27, "Spartacus" did well to release two striped marlin 30 miles offshore towards San Jaime, as well as land a dorado and tuna for Aaron Rasty and friends from Chicago. This was the only boat to catch more than one billfish. Other boats caught a single marlin in different locations such as near the Old Lighthouse, by Cerro Colorado and close to Santa Maria; so basically some were really close whilst others were thirty miles offshore - all were on live bait.

Click to read the rest of PTO- Outdoors, action and adventure

The Ray Greshammer party from Downers Grove, IL has a fine day. They catch & release a 100 lb. STRIPED MARLIN. It is caught on a live Pacific Mackerel. The fighting time was 35 minutes. They also catch three DORADOS ( 20 - 25 lbs. ). All the fish were caughtr 8 - 10 miles out of Cabo. The water temp. was 73 - 74 degrees.