Cabo san lucas
December 10th to December 17th, 2004

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Partly overcast, air temps in the low 80’s nighttime temps in the low 70’s, seas variable, some days flat, other days when there was wind on the bumpy side.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 69-74 F depening on where you were fishing.
BEST LURES: Live bait, green/yellow, pink/blue, guacamaya.

BILLFISH
Firstly, I know we didn’t get a fish report out last week, but here’s a double one to pretty much finish out 2004 and the tidings are good. Cabo has been enjoying great catches of striped marlin for the past couple of weeks, though it has not been as consistent as we would have liked, but there were plenty of vessels that had quadruple marlin days, whilst others caught one to three. Not only did we have stripers, but also a few sailfish to boot. “Felina” was also fortunate to release a blue marlin over 450 lbs for Mr. Fell on December 21st. Anglers of the week were the Fisher family (well they had to be with that name) form Houston – Kim, Sue Jaquelin and Chris were thrilled to catch and release eight striped marlin, aboard “Kathy Too” on December 27th – way to go. Some of the best days were the 19th and 20th; Damien Magan, all the way from Australia fished aboard “Andrea” with buddies Justin Boyd & Josh Wardlaw from Texas and saw that our fishing is good too, with four striped marlin released and a 40 lb wahoo boated. This same day “La Brisa” also scored four for Aneal & Amar Vallurupalli. The 20th was even better, with four of our vessels having four stripers each and the rest of the fleet two or three. Fishing did move around quite a bit, it would be at Golden Gate and Sam Jaime, then suddenly switch to the Cortez side off of Cabeza de Ballena, or just a mile or two out of Cabo, before abruptly switching to the Old Lighthouse, back to Golden Gate and once again to Cabeza de Ballena. Weather was bit on the cold side and we even had a smattering of rain. Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was a healthy ninety-two percent. Lots of bait in the water right now, which could account for some of the fish sighted not being hungry – anglers also entertained by whales, dolphins and manta rays . Sixty-one percent of rentals were able to catch billfish. Pisces anglers had a total of 193 striped marlin of which 179 were released, 2 sailfish and 1 blue marlin also released.

OTHER SPECIES:
After marlin, dorado were the most widely caught sportfish with thirty-seven percent of charters catching these fish – weights were average at 15 to 30 lbs. The catch rates went up towards the close of this report – previously they had been hard to find; some boats got up to nine on the outer edge of the Golden Gate, but the catch was usually one or two fish. Just a few tuna, in the 10 to 30 lb class. Some wahoo from 30 to 40 lbs, all were chance catches whilst trolling, inshore pangas did very well on sierra, pargos and the odd skipjack. One Mako shark was also released.