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Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Capt. George Landrum
January 23, 2006
Cabo San Lucas - Saltwater Fishing Report
Cabo Bite Report
FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
[email protected]
www.flyhooker.com
Cabo Fish Report
Jan 16-22, 2006
WEATHER: Once again we have had great weather here in Cabo with our daytime temperatures in the low 80’s to high 70’s and our cool evenings in the mid 50’s. We had very little clouds this week so of course there was no rain but we did have plenty of sunshine!
WATER: While the first two days of the week were choppy on the Pacific side, the rest of the week gave us great surface conditions on both sides of the Cape. There were some large swells on the Pacific side but after Wednesday there was no wind chop on them, at least once you got out farther than two miles as we did have afternoon near-shore wind effect showing up with a bit of a push from the wind in the east. At the end of the week our warm water looks like a thumbprint with the tip of the thumb up against the cape and the water to the immediate south being the warmest at mostly 73 degrees. Once you get a few miles up the coast in either direction the water cools off. On the Pacific side this is a band of cool water about 15 miles wide and running to the southwest from the shore and across the Golden Gate and San Jaime Banks. This water is 66-68 degrees and farther to the north it warms back up to 69-71 degrees. On the Cortez side of the Cape the warm-cold water break runs almost due east from Cabo to just south of the 1150 spot, then when it hits the 1,000-fathom line it takes a sharp southern turn. On the cool side it is 67-68 degrees. This cool water on the Cortez side is very green and off color.
BAIT: There was a mix of Mackerel and Caballito available this week at the normal $2 per bait.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Cooling water has brought down the number of large Marlin reported this past week, but there were still a few found. I had reports of several Blue Marlin appearing in lure spreads around the south end of the San Jaime Bank with one of these fish hooked up for a short time. With the paucity of Blues around the concentrated effort this week was on Striped Marlin. If you liked to fish in a parking lot, the Golden Gate Bank was the place to be as there was a very heavy concentration of bait on top of the Bank and with it, a very strong concentration of Striped Marlin between 70 and 120 pounds in size. There were several methods employed to catch the fish with the most common being setting a live bait or two deep at 100-150 feet and one or two others near the surface while drifting across the bank. This normally resulted in at least several good bites and sometimes more, with most boats able to release at least one Marlin, and I did see boats with up to five fish released. The other method was to gun the boat toward diving Frigate birds and tossing out a live bait, the first boat there often getting bit. Not my kind of fishing, either way, but hey, if all you want to do is catch a Marlin, join the fleet. Elsewhere, the Marlin bite was not red hot, and a lot of boats saw no fish whatsoever. An occasional tailer or feeder resulted in a hook-up or two close to shore, but there was no concentration of fish other than at the Golden Gate.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: I don’t know what happened to the Tuna, but they were very scarce this week. A few fish were found to the south of the Lighthouse at 25 miles, and they were between 15 and 25 pounds, but there were no large numbers of fish caught. There were plenty of Dolphin seen and good fish marked under them, but they were very boat shy, perhaps from being worked hard by Seiners. I did get a chance to go out on Thursday and we saw fish in the #150-#200 class crash the surface several times on the south edge of the San Jaime, but none of the four of us working the area got bit.
DORADO: I saw very few Dorado flags this week, but I am sure that if someone had found something floating out there the results would have been different. The few fish I did hear of were in the 10-20 pound class and found due south in the warm water, but they were reported as being blind strikes.
WAHOO: A few fish were caught this week, the best areas reported as the San Jaime bank and just off the shore at the lighthouse on the Pacific. Few and far between, there was no concentration of fish with the ones being caught being incidental catches.
INSHORE: I got in a little personal inshore action this week with an 18-boat Sierra tournament from 4-6 pm Saturday. We fished just south of the San Cristobal point and caught fish from 2 pounds to 8 pounds with the average being right around 7 pounds. The bigger fish were all caught on live bait, mostly small Mackerel rigged with light wire leaders and a trailing hook. The smaller fish were on hootchies and Rapallas. I was amazed that all the live bait we used were hit within 2 minutes of being put in the water, but the lures rarely received any action. My partner and I caught 6 Sierra and tied for the smallest fish at 1.8 pounds. The largest fish of the tournament was 10.8 pounds and was caught by the boat that we tied with for smallest fish. Also caught in the same area were Pargo to 20 pounds and grouper to 12 pounds. According to our Panga Captain, this has been average for the week.
NOTES: In brief, warm water to the south, great weather and water, some fair Marlin action on drifted baits, great inshore action, everything else very quiet. This weeks report was written to the music of Pink Floyd on the 2001 EMI 2-CD release “ECHOES – The best of Pink Floyd”. Until next week, Tight Lines! Happy Chris? GO SEAHAWKS!!!
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