95 spot, Chileno, off of Land’s End as close as four miles, off of Santa Maria

April 21st to April 27th, 2006

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Skies clear and sunny, seas were not that calm this week, in fact at the close of the week we had 10-foot seas and whitecaps on the Pacific. Mornings on the Cortez side were much calmer

AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 70 - 72 F.

BEST LURES: Live bait.

BILLFISH
This week could only be described as average with just fifty five percent of charters hooking up to striped marlin. It's hard to say why this was, as we ve had a dark moon and the water temperature is actually quite high at between 70 and 72 F. The fish were not all in one area; a couple of days they were at Gordo Banks, then off Chileno, the 95 spot or Land’s End, up to 22 miles offshore. They are quite fussy about what they eat too. Bait was cast many times to fish that were not hungry and captains preferred the hardier Caballito over mackerel, to be able to cast over and over again without the bait dying. Three striped marlin in one day was considered an excellent catch this week and there were only a couple of boats that achieved this: on April 21st Valerie released three striped marlin and boated a small yellowfin tuna at the 95 spot for David Cleaver from Kirksville, Mo fishing with friends Justin and Adam. On the 26th, Adriana also released three, this time at Gordo Banks for Patrick Giberson from Boulder, Co. Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was quite respectable at seventy nine percent. Pisces anglers caught a total of sixty-six striped marlin of which sixty-three were released, along with one sailfish.

OTHER SPECIES:
Fishing for larger offshore species was poor this week, with just eleven percent of charters catching dorado ranging from 15 to 45 lbs, usually just a single fish taken whilst trolling. Yellowfin tuna catches were even slower with a measly five percent of boats finding small fish no more than 20 lbs. There were a couple of nice wahoo at 50 and 60 lbs and one hammerhead shark was released. Inshore for smaller game, pangas had a ball. They loaded up on sierra, roosterfish, yellowtail, skipjack and a few pompano.