3 –17 miles off Old Lighthouse, 4 miles out from Land’s End, San Jaime, one day Cabeza de Ballena.

July 21st to July 27th, 2006

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Overcast, humid, rain on Monday and Tuesday, now mostly clear skies seas calm.

AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 82F

BILLFISH
Tropical storm Emily drew close our shores this past week, giving much needed rain, but also causing the port to be closed on Tuesday and choppy seas on Wednesday. Due to losing a day’s fishing catch rates are lower. However, even without the stormy weather fishing was not that great, with just fifteen percent of charters catching billfish. It’s hard to say why this, as there are a lot of factors involved. Years ago we wouldn’t even see a striped marlin during the summer months, then it changed and they stayed year round, now those we are seeing are few and small. We have had a slight increase on sailfish and also a couple of blue marlin. It looks like we are in a transition period and expect blue marlin to really take off once we get into August. One boat that did have luck was Cowboy VII, skippered by Chris Golden, with a fish a little over 600 lbs that was released just three miles off of Santa Maria. Four guests of Latimore Material Corporation were on boat and took turns cranking on the fish that took one and a half hours to bring to the boat, after snatching a green and black lure. They still managed to get the fish to the boat despite observing at the time of release that the hook had almost completely straightened out. William Larcheid from Brookfield Wisc, here fishing with his two sons aboard “Ni Modo”, was one of the lucky ones; after what had appeared to be an unproductive day and on the way back in, they had a double hook up on sailfish, one of which didn’t stick (sorry dad) and also managed to hook a striped marlin, the largest of the week at 130 lbs – so both boys were able to bring a billfish to the boat. Pisces anglers caught a total of just nine billfish this week consisting of 7 striped marlin, 5 released, 1 blue marlin and 2 sailfish. Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was sixty-nine percent.

OTHER SPECIES:
Yellowfin tuna were the most widely caught fish this week with twenty five percent of charters finding fish in the 20 to 30 lb class. In fact as these were more of a sure thing a lot of boats opted to go directly to where the tuna were believed to be rather than waste time looking for billfish. So in reality we probably have more billfish but captains prefer not to get “skunked”. Twenty five percent of Pisces anglers caught yellowfin tuna this week, giving us a grand total of 152 fish in the 18 to 35 lb class. Nearly all of these catches were at San Jaime on the Pacific. “C Rod”, did really well on tuna, with thirteen on July 26th and nineteen on July 27th. “Rebecca” also did well with fourteen on the 22nd. Cedar plugs, feathers and a variety of lures worked on these. Dorado catches were at eighteen percent, with catches seldom more than a single fish, in the 20 to 30 lb class caught whilst trolling. Inshore pangas caught roosters as long as the surf was fishable; they also got the odd stray dorado. One of our Pisces clients fishing in Puerto Vallarta this week had a huge surprise when he found that the large needlefish he caught appeared to be an all-tackle world record. Bob Soukup from Dallas was forced to fish in the bay due to tropical storm Emily, but he was pleased to pull in a needlefish that weighed 18 lbs, caught on a live “caballito” that took five minutes to land on 30 lb test. The current record is 11 lb 4oz caught in Costa Rica in 2004.