Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Capt. Tracy Ehrenberg
June 28, 2004
Cabo San Lucas - Saltwater Fishing Report

PISCES WEEKLY FISH REPORT June 18th to 24th, 2004

BILLFISH: An absolutely fantastic week here in Cabo, lots of striped marlin and now some strikes on blues as the weather warms up. The best news of all this week was the capture of a commercial vessel long-lining at Punta Gorda. We received a call from the captain of one our charters, the Ni Modo, advising on Thursday morning that there was a boat setting long lines, between the two banks, about ten miles offshore. This vessel had been seen docked in Cabo the day before. Always in these cases action has to be Arturo Morales, the Pesca guy spoke to the marines who were available to go and board the vessel, fully armed with automatic weapons, the only glitch was they didn’t have a boat to get there. All of our boats were out on fishing charters, so we began making calls to see who had a boat available to take the authorities, along with a T.V crew out to Punta Gorda, it needed to be a fast boat, so that we could get there in time before they realized that anybody was on to them. We made dozens of calls and to our amazement could not find anybody willing to go, even with us offering to pay for their fuel. Everybody was busy or doing something else. I have to be honest; I could barely contain my frustration and sense of betrayal. So many people here live off of the sportfishing industry and benefit from living in this beautiful place, but when it came to putting up with a little inconvenience they didn’t want to know. Finally we saw that one of the Gaviota’s fleet boats was tied up at the dock, a quick call to the manager and the boat was ours to use. It took the boat one hour to reach the vessel which was flagrantly caught with over two miles of lines in the water. As the marines approached the vessel, they pointed their weapons at the crew and asked them not to move an inch, as they were going to inspect their boat – a 70 ft modified shrimper, operating in tandem with a 24 ft panga, which was trying to retreive the long lines as fast as they could . One marlin was seen leaping, jumping for his life as the long line hook held him, he frantically shook his head and managed to get off, whilst being filmed by Televisa, the largest news channel in Latin America. Once the vessel was boarded it was seen to be a Mexican vessel registered in Lazaro Cardenas on the mainland in the state of Michoacan. The crew consisted of eight people one of whom was Japanese and was apparently there as an instructor, a few marlin were found aboard, as well as a shark, plus some shark fins, we believe that once they saw the boat approaching with Marines on board, they began cutting the marlin that were hooked, off. The boat was forced to return to port, where the paperwork was examined. The permit they had was to fish for tuna and skipjack with lures. So there was no way around it, they were breaking the law. The boat was confiscated by the Navy, the Japanese crew member was detained by immigration and the vessel has now been moved to La Paz to await legal proceedings. We consider this a great victory and believe that the lives of many fish and marine animals were saved. We hope that this will serve as an example to others that we shall not tolerate illegal fishing in our area and will fight to protect it. Hats off to Arturo Morales from Pesca, as he did not back down for a moment and also to my husband Marco, who was there organizing everything and was burnt to a crisp after spending from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm aboard the vessels, ensuring that all proceedures were followed correctly. On the fishing front Pisces anglers had a total of one hundred and eleven striped marlin this week of which one hundred and nine were released. Our catch success rate for marlin was eighty-nine percent and our overall catch success rate for all species combined was ninety-five percent. The few boats that were skunked were just plain unlucky. Boats averaged from one to four striped marlin in a day, with both lures and bait working well. A lot of fish came up on the lures then took bait cast to them. Weights were from 110 to 200 lbs. On June 19th David Brown, along with Joe & Kevin Hudnall from South Dakota and California respectively, released four striped marlin aboard “La Brisa”. This same day “Libre” also released four as well as boating a 60 lb wahoo for the Deberry family from Chino, Ca. “Valerie” had another of our quadruple days this time for Heather Pekarthey and Connie Villareal from San Jose Ca. and San Antonio Tx. As we enter summer, we will start to see more of the blue marlin strikes mentioned above, materialize into solid catches. The water temperature was from 76-70 F so once it hits the 80’s we’ll see more of these larger fish as well as an increase on sailfish. OTHER SPECIES: A big jump on Dorado this week, with a total of sixty one for our fleet and a little over fifty percent of charters hooking fish in the 15 to 40 lb class. Just a couple of wahoo in the 40 to 60 lb class. Tuna fishing was on the slow side, though we did see catches of one or two fish in the 10 to 20 lb category throughout the week. One boat that had an enviable and active day was “Ruthless” on June 24th, scoring seven Dorado, two tuna, a wahoo and one striped marlin release. Inshore quite a lot of activity for roosterfish which are of a nice size, many around the 30 to 45 lb mark; amberjack, sierra and some snappers.

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear, blue skies, seas are a beautiful deep blue and mostly calm. Pacific side is still breezy.

AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 78 F

BEST LURES: Live bait, green/yellows, petroleros, black/orange

BASED ON THE CATCHES OF PISCES FLEET BY TRACY EHRENBERG

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