Spent 6 days in Puerto Vallarta, 1/4 to 1/10. Nice way to get out of the itty bitty rainy season in SoCal. High 70s all week, pleasant tropical humidity, never any rain. Now I'm back in a rainy Starbucks parking lot, sitting in my car typing up this report.
Didn't get out to fish until the 2nd morning. Got to see the moon set over the bay.
Started with iron but nada on that. Switched over to Fish Bites on a c-rig and got my skunk off with a Raucous Grunt. Also known as a Burro (sp?) locally. New species!
Interesting thing, when I would see bait or boils, the baitfish would dance 5-20ft across the surface, skittering right along. Landing any lure on top of these boils wouldn't result in any action though.
On the c-rig I would get some small but assertive perch pecks every 5 casts or so. Started with a #2 offset circle and at one point dropped to a #14 J but that didn't get anything.
2nd morning I got another, smaller Raucous Grunt. No pic. Same thing as the day before. Every 5 casts or so I'd get bit and nothing would come of it.
3rd morning the same song and dance, but a new species. I asked Ben already what he thought it might be, and he sent it on to the guy who runs Mexfish, and nobody is sure. Either a Golden or a Slender Croaker. It didn't have any pattern whatsoever, just uniform silver, so it doesn't line up with any of the croaker IDs because of it. Reminds me a lot of a Sand Whiting from the Gulf to be honest, but haven't found any info to suggest a presence of them in the area. Regardless....new species.
Talked to a fellow fisherman on the latter 2 mornings. He apparently likes to eat the grunts, and he caught a little bigger one than me. He told me on the last morning at the end of my session that he'd caught 5 different species down where he was on shrimp and squid, including what he thought was a baby yellowfin tuna. He tells me an hour before I check out!
Well, PV wasn't what fishing lore made it out to be, but it was nice to get away. Always happy to get home and sleep in my own bed.
OH, and Koga! I didn't know you visited PV recently! Send me your address, I found your binkie!
