Grande Black Marlin Invade El Banco !

Imagine you’re here now, fishing in Puerto Vallarta’s beautiful Bay of Banderas. Imagine after weeks of ‘less than spectacular’ fishing you decide to take a chance and you roll the dice so to speak. Your Captain points the boat towards our world famous fishing grounds of El Banco. After about 90 minutes under power, you finally find the ‘high spots’, an unmarked underwater mountain range where spiky peaks reach up from the sea floor bottom to about 60 feet below the surface. Bait is abundant, the water is blue and the seas are rolling gently. You don’t know what to expect, so you put a rigged-up Skipjack Tuna in the water, set the pole and you’re in the game amigo. Anything can happen, especially now that we had a Hurricane march up the Mexican coastline, pushing northward toward Puerto Vallarta. By now you should have figured out we have some Giant Black Marlin at El Banco, but that’s not all amigos. High Season for fishing starts now!

Yesterday I sent my fishing report to the different web pages and magazines, then the moment I sent in the article, I got word that everything had changed. They’ve gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. Let’s Start with El Banco or The Bank, we haven’t had much information from this area until I got word that there are some huge Black Marlin. I mean Black Marlin over 800 to 1,000 pound range. And it’s not like there are only one or two, there are many. We should call these Black Marlin ‘freight trains’ because you can’t stop their momentum. In one day there were three Marlin of this size hook-ups, two were spooled, one lost at the Gaff. So no pictures. There should be Yellowfin Tuna in the area, but no reports. Sailfish are also on the list of available species. For now El Banco is reminding us of days of old!

Looking to Corbetena, what a difference a week can make. Last week we were happy for Football Tuna at the south of the Rock. But with the massive amounts of Skipjack Tuna running the area larger Yellowfin tuna have moved in, finally! We still have Footballs in the 60 to 80 lb range, no complaining here. But we’ve seen a few boats hook into Yellowfin Tuna, one that spooled the client. There have been a few of these and some are using words like ‘Cows’, Super cows and in my world A YF Tuna over 300 lbs is called a Monster! These boats weren’t prepared for the unexpected and they were caught short. But this won’t happen again. Blue Marlin are also running the area and they’re in the 300 to 450 lb. Range, throw in Sailfish and Dorado at 20 to 30 lbs and all of a sudden Corbetena looks pretty attractive. Now you need to decide which location to choose for the morning run. Good luck with that one.

The area off Punta Nayarit aka Punta Mita has mostly blue water and smooth seas. There is some trash in the water along with Sailfish and Dorado are starting to move into the area as well. But if you’re in the 8 hr. duration distance, the fishing grounds between El Morro and Corbetena is also alive with Sailfish Action mostly. Of course, there are always Jack Crevalles, Bonito, and Skip Jack Tuna and if you can find a floating log or any debris it could turn into your lucky day. The bottom line is this, get out there, things are changing daily for the better.

The bite all of a sudden is early, be where you want to be no later than 08:00 am, the earlier the better. The afternoon bite is anyone’s guess. Water temperatures are a perfect 86 degrees and there is plenty of bait in the water. If you remember, last week it was a “too much” bait scenario. For now, Skipjack Tuna’s are your best bait. But still run a lure, and even a dead bait might be something you’ll want to try. The bottom line here is there are fish out there, waiting for you to show up.

Until next week, don’t forget to kiss your fish!

Written by Stan Gabruk

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