March Fishing Report!

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By, Lineberger, Myles <p>

The fishing has been up and down for the past month but with a good Captain and some luck you can catch fish both offshore and inshore. The fishing in the bay gets harder and harder every year and it’s because of over fishing, mostly with illegal nets. It seems that we will have to wait until the fishery crashes before the Mexican government will do anything about it. The laws are in place but there is no one to police it. My hope is that more of us will be letting the Mexican government know that we need patrol boats going around the bay day and night and getting these illegal nets out of the water. Then we need to make the size of the mesh of the nets larger so that the small fish don’t get caught and have a chance to grow. The size of some of the fish that are brought in is just stupid, ¼ pound Rabalo, (Snook) when this fish should get as least get over 5 lbs. In the U.S. Snook are not allowed to be caught commercially only by sport fishermen and then there is a slot limit, nothing over 36” and nothing under 18”. There are more Snook in Florida now than we have had in 50 years or more. If we give the Bay a chance to come back it would do so much faster than most people would think, but we need to give it that chance.<br>

Offshore: As the season begins to change the waters offshore are beginning to warm up to the magic 80 degree mark and the Tunas and Marlin are starting to pile up at the Rock and El Banco. With each new school of porpoise that migrates in more and more tunas from 50 to 150 pounds are coming with them and instead of leaving with the porpoise they are staying around the high spots to take advantage of the massive amounts of bait available there for them. While there aren’t really many fish over the giant 200-pound mark yet… there are plenty of fish in the 50 to 150 ranges. Captains like Josh Temple use tricks like kite and helium balloon fishing to float live baits out to the feeding tuna while keeping all line and gear out of the water, it really gets them to bite. We still have some Striped Marlin keeping fishermen busy about 10 miles west of the Rock.<br>

Inshore: The inshore action had been good to great. The Pargos (Dog tooth Snapper) and other snappers spawning have been racked up in the thousands, we caught a nice one over 40 pounds. Kim at Charter Dreams reports that Sierra Mackerel, Jack Cravele (Toro), and the California Bonitas have been doing well just south of the Marietas, which is also where we caught the 40 pound Dog Tooth Snapper (Pargo) on a live blue runner or as they are called locally Chili Verdes or Cookies. The best way to catch these fish is with a diving Rapala with a small squid bait 18” behind the diving plug and don’t forget to use steel leader for those toothy Mackerel. She also said that there have been Sails caught off Punta Mita and at the south point.<br>

Cajon de Pena: The Bass have moved off the beds and are hungry. Fish up to 8 pounds have been reported and about 10 to 20 fish per day. They have been hanging deep around the timber.<br>

If you would like to know more about our fine fishing please drop me a line or I guess I should say e-mail and we will get you hooked up. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Love those bent rods!