Santa Rosalia, Mexico: Good Sawtail Grouper Fishing At Isla Tortuga

May 21, 2005, Mike Kanzler, Isla San Marcos, Santa Rosalia fishing, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

This week I am very busy with the Yellowtail Shootout Fishing Tournament, which is going great.

The weather is hot and getting hotter in the Santa Rosalia fishing area. Air temperatures are in the high 80s during the days, and in the mornings up to about 70. There is no wind other than light southern breezes during the late afternoons. Water temperatures are at 75 degrees around the islands, and they hit the 80 degree mark offshore!. Visibility is good at 30 feet around Isla San Marcos, and offshore and at Tortuga it's over 100 feet.

In this week's fishing, it was Sawtail Grouper hell out at Isla Tortuga! Lots of big fish upwards of 30 pounds have been hitting my deck all week long, and that's every day, because I fished the whole week.

The first run to the island, with Bud Nielson of Yorba Linda, Calif., started off the amazing fishing find. With dropper loop live mackerel, we fished in 250 feet of water at the south end of the island. We took 6 Sawtails to 25 pounds and two Yellowtail of 23 pounds.

On another run to Tortuga the next day, with Roger Bill and Bob Fay, we where back at it with 6 more sawtails to 30 pounds and two more yellowtail to 18 pounds.

The next two days were a lot of fun to fish, with what I call them The O.C. (Orange County) crew, Matt "Bulldog" Alferes of Cypress, Calif., Shane Sowers who now lives in Pueblo, Colo., and his brother David Sowers of Corona, Calif. This is when the bite really got hot, with 6 yellowtail to 30 pounds and 12 sawtail grouper to 30-plus pounds most on bait, and some of them were caught on iron as well. The second day saw much of the same fish count. The grouper out there where really on the chew.

I also saw the Tony Reyes mothership anchored just north of Santa Rosalia, on a 12 day run from San Felipe.

Also, the first day of the Second Annual Isla San Marcos Yellowtail ShootOut is in the books. We got good fish size, and somewhat strong numbers were registered at the scale. Tomorrow we'll wrap it up.

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