Cabo san lucas
January 28th to February 2nd, 2005

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Partly cloudy, calm seas.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 71F.
BEST LURES: Live bait, red/yellow, green/yellow.

BILLFISH
Fishing was not what Id call fantastic this week, but it was fairly decent, resulting in an overall catch success rate for all species combined of eighty-five percent. The week started out a bit slow for marlin with several boats getting skunked at the start of this report. We then began catching a few dorado and tuna, then as the week progressed we saw quite a turnaround on the marlin; by the close of this report, boats were catching one to three a piece, giving us a marlin catch success rate of sixty-nine percent. The stripers have been of a good size too, with 150 lbs being the average. Jay Bonds fishing aboard Kathy Too ran into a tough fish. They hooked this striper just five minutes after settling down to troll, four miles out from Lands End. The fish came out of nowhere and snatched a red & yellow lure and took off, after forty minutes of pumping they finally got him up the swimstep, but the fish was so feisty it was dangerous, not being able to get near the lure to release it, the fish took off again, battling for another hour, before they were finally able to get him close again. When they did they saw that this was a big striped marlin, 200 lbs. This time Captain Jose had a chance to quickly free the lure before the fish released itself. Jay's wife commented that her husband and the fish were much alike, tough…..it took nine years of dating before she could get him to marry her... First American Title, on their Mid Winter Thaw headed up Joe Drum, had great fishing aboard Valerie with four striped marlin, released and 15 tunas, as well as other catches on various boats anglers that did well were Bob Pratte, Steve Mase and Craig Beroy. The King Harbor Marlin Club, held its annual Cabo shoot out, last week-end and Capn Hook ended up in first place with three releases, for Mark Morache and Ken Carey. On February 1st Ed Barringer fishing with Joe Rossi released three striped marlin and five giant squid aboard Andrea . Next day out Victor Gonzalez and Mark Mullohand form Santa Rosa, released another three this time aboard Ruthless . Pisces anglers caught a total of 92 striped marlin of which 90 were released.

OTHER SPECIES:
After marlin, dorado were the next most frequently caught species, with a little over half the boats catching fish in the 15 to 30 lb class, we well as the odd 50 lb er too. The normal catch was just a single fish, and more rarely three. Found over a widespread area, they took mostly lures. Yellow fin tuna catches, were great for a couple of days when boats found schools close to a dead whale; those that did well had up to a dozen in the 20 to 30 lb size, however only about twenty percent of boats caught this species. The giant squid that appeared for a couple of days were fun, as they attacked the lures just like a marlin. They weighed 20 to 30 lbs, some were brought in and others were released. Just a couple of wahoo this week, one was pretty nice at 65 lbs, caught by Dave Burger from Walnut Creek, Ca. Inshore there were a few skipjacks and roosters.