Cabo san lucas
January 21st to January 28th, 2005

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Partly cloudy, now clear, surprise light rain one morning, seas calm.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 71F.
BEST LURES: Live bait, guacamaya.

BILLFISH
Fishing continues to be very good here at Lands End. Whilst most people are enduring rain, snow and freezing temperatures, we couldn't have better weather. It's beautiful right now, the sea is a sparkling blue, skies are clear and there's a ton of whales and dolphins to see, to say nothing of the fishing. Our overall catch success rate this week was a very nice ninety percent for all species combined, with fifty-seven percent of boats catching striped marlin. Boats fished from the Old Lighthouse on the Pacific to Chileno on the Cortez side. The average catch was one or two striped marlin plus a couple of dorado. The marlin were teased up with lures and then usually took bait, with about 40% of the hook ups on lures and 60% on live bait. The full moon did not seem to affect the fishing, but we did have quite a bit of cloud cover at night. We did have some boats that did slightly better than others, such as 'La Brisa' on January 25th with five marlin released for Gary Clark from Cocoa Beach Fl, fishing with James Speirs from Stamford, Connecticut. This same day Dennis Huber from Illinois fishing with his wife, released three stripers aboard Andrea, as well as boating six dorado. Next day out Valerie had four marlin for Thomas Gondoly from Point Troy Michigan and Keith Puitz form Erlanger, Kentucky. Not to be outdone Ken and Michael Vandre Vrede from Lincoln Park, New Jersey, also released four stripers board Rebecca this same day. Pisces anglers caught a total of seventy seven striped marlin of which seventy five were released.

OTHER SPECIES:
Dorado out did marlin this week with fifty-nine percent of charters catching fish between 20 and 40 lbs. Towards the end of the week we even saw some as big as 60 lbs. The average catch was two per boat, though some did better with up to seven in a day. Yellowfin tuna was much slower, with just five percent of the boats finding fish and then it was a way of offshore, up to forty miles. The only boat that scored big on tuna was Ni Modo on the 22nd with 24 fish, (most released) between 20 and 25 lbs. Just a few wahoo and they were on the small side at around 40 lbs. We had a couple of mako sharks again this week between 30 and 80 lbs, released. Sierra and skipjacks inshore.