Land’s End 2 to 18 miles offshore, 95 spot, Cabeza de ballena, towards the end of the week Punta Gorda

April 28th to May 4th, 2006

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Skies partially cloudy, windy, cooler than normal for this time of year. Seas rough around Cabo, better up into the Sea of Cortez

AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 71 - 74 F.

BEST LURES: Live mackerel, ballyhoo

BILLFISH
Not a very good week for marlin, in fact we saw a drop to just forty-one percent of charters catching fish from 120 to 170 lbs. It’s hard to say exactly why this is, but the captains say that fishing has been good all year and it’s logical to have a slow down. Conditions are good the water temperature has been between 72 and 74 F and there is a lot of bait, including squid and flying fish, which may mean the marlin are stuffing themselves. Weather conditions on the Pacific were terrible, super windy and whitecaps all day. Boats went the other way to calmer seas but couldn’t escape some of the spill over from the Pacific making for some rough seas earlier in the week. Fish were quite spread out and even the boats that didn’t catch anything usually saw fish. On April 30th, two of our most popular boats did quite well, “Valerie” released three striped marlin for Hook Harmeling from Dallas Texas, fishing with girlfriend Adriane Staggs, who released a rare fish, a marlin with brown eyes (see photo below). Captain Benito mentioned that dead ballyhoo worked well for him. This same day “Ni Modo” also released three marlin and boated a dorado for Scott German from Brentwood Tn, fishing with friends Michael Behmaier and Bob Guarnotta. On May 1st “Ruthless” released three striped marlin and boated three tuna for Larry Herodeck from Coral Springs, Florida. Pisces anglers caught a total of 39 striped marlin this week of which 36 were released. Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was seventy two percent. The Rolex IGFA tournament starts on Monday, so this sounds pretty gloomy, however, the day that this report was written, captains reported a big improvement on striped marlin catches, so hopefully Cabo will produce the goods as normal.

OTHER SPECIES:
Yellowfin tuna gave a good showing this week with thirty-nine percent of charters catching school size fish, in the 15 to 30 lb class, giving us a total of one hundred and sixty four yellowfin captured. Boats averaged from four to ten fish once they found the schools, 12 to 18 miles straight out from Lands End. Dorado catches were slow with just nine percent of boats catching the odd fish from 15 to 20 lbs. We also have on small Mako shark and a few skipjacks. It was too rough for pangas to fish inshore on the Pacific.