Land’s End to San Jose, with the 95 and 11.50 spots producing more fish
September 16th to September 22nd, 2005

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Hot, clear, sunny skies, seas calm, one day that was a little rough was the 20th.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 87 F.
BEST LURES: Assorted lures for blue marlin, with the petrolero working well, live bait, for stripes and sails, as well as dorado.

BILLFISH
The fishing this week was red hot, just like the weather. Lots of striped marlin, blue marlin and sailfish around our shores. The biggest fish this week was actually one that got away. Dale Hassinger Pennsylvania, battled a monster fish for over five hours, aboard “Happy Boy”, before finally breaking if off. The fish took a “Petrolero” lure 10 miles off of Palmilla and was estimated at 800 lbs.

We had a ton of excellent catches this week, so not all can be mentioned but here are some: Gary Allison a long time friend and client of Pisces fished with his buddies on September 16th aboard “La Brisa” and did well to get a “grand-slam” of a blue marlin, striped marlin and sailfish, plus two dorados for the table. This same day “La Brisa” released three striped marlin and a sailfish for Chuck & Jan Woody from California at the 95 spot – all were on live bait. Also out this day were Espen Galtung and Dosvig, who had traveled form Norway in search of a billfish, after fishing many other locations worldwide without success; they broke their losing streak aboard “Sundancer” with one blue marlin and two striped marlin released at the 11.50 spot, along with one dorado. This was a very good day overall as the Sr. Moment also had two blue marlin and a sailfish released for Alfredo Santini and friends. On the 20th, “Tracy Ann” had a good day for Jim &Yvonne Jandrain from Wichita, Kansas, releasing three sailfish and a striped marlin 10 miles off of San Jose – the marlin was on a lure and the sails on live bait. To round out the week Bryan and Dannielle Neth from Alabama were thrilled to release three striped marlin and two sailfish, aboard “La Brisa” between the 95 and 11.50 spot. This same day Tony Hoover, also from Alabama, released a 350 lb blue aboard “Yahoo”, 13 miles off of Chileno.

It was hard to get bait this week; boat took all kinds of odd fish, including pompano and caballito. We had a back up supply of frozen bally-hoo for those boats unable to purchase Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was ninety-one percent, with sixty-three percent of charters catching billfish. Pisces anglers caught a total of 75 billfish this week, consisting of 32 striped marlin, 28 sailfish and 14 blue marlin, all but two fish were released.

OTHER SPECIES:
We saw a big improvement on dorado this week, with this species finally showing up, it was the best we’ve had all year, with forty-six percent of charters finding fish in the 15 to 35 lb class. Catches were from one to seven fish, with live bait working better than anything else; one of the best spots was 13 miles straight out from Land’s End. Tuna catches were extremely slow, in fact we caught just one! We did have several wahoo, in the 40 to 50 lb range, but they were few and far between. Pangas inshore had some skipjacks and a hammerhead shark.