Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Capt. Tracy Ehrenberg
May 24, 2004
Cabo San Lucas - Saltwater Fishing Report

PISCES WEEKLY FISH REPORT

MAY 14TH TO MAY 20TH, 2004

BILLFISH: O.K I know this is late, but we’ve had a hectic week with the Rolex –IGFA Offshore Championship. The tournament concluded on Friday with an awards dinner and once again it was an outstanding success. Cabo produced the goods with a total of 297 striped marlin, 1 blue marlin and 1 sailfish during the four day event in which 66 boats were used and 282 anglers participated. Anglers came from far and wide places such as Finland, Croatia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Italy to name but a few – it was great to meet so many different people and everybody I spoke to expressed an eagerness to return next year. The whole tournament was first class. The target was all billfish, all to be released and all to be caught on circle hooks – wahoo, tuna and dorado were also included. Boats sighted as many as 20 stripers in a day, but crews were not allowed to help the anglers, by casting bait for them, which is the best method of catching marlin in Cabo right now. All the anglers attending were here because they had won an IGFA qualifying event elsewhere in the world, but not everybody was familiar with circle hooks and many found the casting difficult. The circle hook goes against everything learned previously for hooking fish with the traditional “j” hook, so it takes a little getting used to. Anglers got better every day though, proven by the catch rates – on day one a total of 44 striped marlin were released, building throughout the week to 112 on the final day. Top team was the team representing Texas Women’s Anglers, with 3400 points. This team (including one ten year old girl) each received beautiful Rolex watches and bronze sculptures by world renowned sculptor Bodo Muche. Top angler was Edgar Artecona, from the winning team with 1900 points. The largest wahoo was 97.3 lbs caught by Geoff McGovern from the Nova Scotia team. Biggest dorado was 61 lbs landed by Jason Langford, representing the Blue Marlin Classic team and just one tuna was caught, 68.9 lbs by lady angler Pat Kelley from Isla Mujeres Billfish team. Pisces anglers had an overall catch success rate of seventy-six percent for all species combined this week, with sixty-seven percent catching billfish. Again, lots of fish being seen, but not all were hungry – in fact I heard that the winning tournament team, actually got a couple of their fish on dead ballyhoo, on the last day, which isn’t something used that often here. So the lesson to be learned is be open to new ideas, when the standard doesn’t work. Some of the luckier anglers for us, that were not in the tournament, were Fred Randall and Mike Shultz from California and Michigan respectively, releasing two striped marlin and catching a 40 lb dorado and 50 lb wahoo aboard “Valerie” on May 14th and Bill Adams & Robert Jones, both from Texas, releasing three stripers on May 15th , aboard “Andrea”. Pisces anglers caught a total of 61 striped marlin of which 60 were released.

OTHER SPECIES: Quite slow for other gamefish. After marlin dorado were the most frequent catch for boats offshore, though they could not be said to be plentiful. Just the odd fish here and there picked up while trolling for marlin, with weights averaging 20 to 40 lbs. Quite a few wahoo were taken this week, again whilst trolling, weights were 40 to 60 lbs. Inshore there was quite a bit of action – the Rolex –IGFA tournament sponsors, fished pangas one morning and released, over 60 roosterfish. Sierra and skipjacks were also found inshore.

LOCATION: Week started out close to Cabo at Cabeza de Ballena, then moved up to Chileno and by the end of the week was off of La Laguna in San Jose.

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear sunny skies, windy at the start of the week, seas now calm and only a little wind.

AVERAGE WATER TEMP. 72 F

BEST LURES: Live bait.

Based on the catches of Pisces Fleet by Tracy Ehrenberg

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