BILLFISH: We saw a marked improvement on fishing this week, as the weather finally turned into a true Cabo summer, the kind that you when you walk outside you immediately begin to sweat. Conditions right now are perfect, hot, mostly clear skies, seas so calm, even on the Pacific; it looks like the waves don’t move. Our overall catch success rate was up this week ten percent from last week and although we did not have any blue marlin we did have fairly good numbers of sailfish and striped marlin as well as some mixed bag days.
Boats fished predominantly on the Pacific up as far as Golden Gate, though some did catch fish on the Cortez near Santa Maria. August 10th, Paul Findlow and Wayne Moores from England fished aboard “La Brisa”; whilst other boats raced past to Golden Gate, their captain chose to stay closer and fished at La Margaritas and Cabeza de Ballena, resulting in two sailfish and one striped marlin released. Next day the Golden Gate was the place, with “Tracy Ann” releasing two sailfish, a striped marlin and boating a dorado and yellowfin tuna for a group from Southern California. This same day “Adriana” fishing in the opposite direction with David, Andrew and Melanie Kearns on board from Shropshire, England released two striped marlin and a sailfish. So, the Europeans did well this week….we also had Julian Calderon from Madrid, Spain who released two striped marlin and a sailfish as well as boating a dorado aboard “Ruthelss” at the Golden Gate on August 12th. Pisces anglers caught a total of 42 billfish this week consisting of 32 striped marlin and 10 sailfish, all released. By the way we heard of another huge blue marlin, over 800 lbs caught at the East Cape, but are trying to verify the information.
OTHER SPEICES: Billfish really were the main item this week in Cabo, but dorado and yellowfin tuna gave a fair showing also. Yellowfin tuna is where we saw the biggest increase with forty four percent of charters catching between one and thirteen fish in a day. Sizes were average at 15 to 35 lbs. Top tuna catch was Johnny and Stacy Powers, fishing on Stacy’s birthday, August 8th aboard Bill Collector, where they surprised Stacy with cake and champagne….and by catching thirteen tuna. Thirty percent of boats caught dorado but the catches were whilst trolling for marlin, usually one or two fish only in the 20 to 40 lb class.
LOCATION: Golden Gate, San Jaime, Cabeza de Ballena.
WEATHER CONDITIONS: Hot, partly cloudy, seas calm with the exception of a couple of days when there were whitecaps on the way back from the Pacific. Daytime air temps in the high 90’s.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 85 F
BEST LURES: Live bait was scare this week, but what worked best, dorado on assorted lures, tuna on cedar plugs.
