Cabo san lucas
January 1st to January 6th, 2005

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Skies partly cloudy, seas calm.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 70-72 F.
BEST LURES: Live bait, green/white, brown.

BILLFISH
We had steady to moderate fishing the first week of the year, resulting in a catch success rate for striped marlin of fifty-four percent, for fish in the 100 to 160 lb class, the average being around 130 lbs. The overall catch success rate for all species combined was a respectable eighty-nine percent. Lots of fish were seen, but not all were hungry, besides weather has been changeable one day cold (i.e in our terms, low 70s) the next day blazing sunshine. We had a couple of boats with triple billfish days, such as Rebecca on December 31st for the Shroeder brothers, Scott, Keith and Rob, from New Jersey, who found the Old Lighthouse to be the lucky spot for them. Another group that did well was Brian Andress from Tampa, Florida, who with friends Steven and Lee was also able to release three stripers, this time aboard Valerie on January 4th, on the Cortez side at the 95 spot. Boats fished both the Pacific and Cortez side, with the latter being the more productive. Fish took both lures and bait and on many days needed a lot to tempting to bite anything. Still, skilled captains stuck at it and most ended up with at least one striper, or a token dorado or two. Once the weather stabilizes we should see an increase on striped marlin both in numbers and consistency. Pisces anglers caught a total of fifty striped marlin this week of which forty-seven were released.

OTHER SPECIES:
Numbers wise more dorado were actually caught this week than marlin, but only forty-five percent of charters hooked this species. When caught, charters averaged one to five fish, with the average right at three fish, in the 18 to 25 lb class. Some of the dorado were found close in, just around the corner from the arch, whilst others were picked up on marlin lures, with one of the better areas being that in front of the Old Lighthouse. Yellow tuna catches were nothing to write home about, though I must add, that Tony Nungaray, captain of Felina reported having a tuna on he swears was 400 lbs Tony has proven himself many times, so we believe him. Unfortunately the monster was lost at the gaff…….there goes another world record. A few other boats caught fish in the 15 to 30 lb category, with catches of one to five fish; some lucked out and got up to ten at the Jaime Bank. We had a couple of wahoo this week, one was enviable eighty pound fish caught by Charles James on the last day of 2004. Inshore, skipjacks and small pargos were caught, along with the odd sierra.