Off of Cerro Blanco, 18 miles off Palmilla, San Jose, San Jaime, 30 miles off Lighthouse, Destiladeres, 95 spot.

August 4th to August 10th, 2006

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Monday brought a local thunderstorm and again much needed rain. This did not affect seas, though the start of the day was a bit wet for anglers. Rest of week was partly cloudy skies. Much cooler than normal for August.

AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 81F

BEST LURES: Live bait for striped marlin, guacamaya, blue white, green/black for blue marlin, cedar plugs, and feathers.

BILLFISH
Not a great week for billfish with just twenty nine percent of charters catching a marlin or sailfish, but overall it was not bad with a catch rate of seventy eight percent for all species combined. One day, August 4th, was particularly good for blue marlin. On this day we had four blues released, all in the same area, off of San Jose and in the 190 to 250 pound category. On August 6th our biggest fish of the week was taken, a beautiful 320 lb’er captured by Alex Barit from Palm Beach Florida aboard “Ni Modo”, who was celebrating his 21st birthday. The fish took a green and yellow lure off Cerro Colorado taking 45 minutes to bring to the boat. The East Cape Bisbee concluded last Friday, where 54 boats participated. Although there were a lot of fish released only two fish over the 300 lb minimum qualified. Winner was Mi Corazon with a 418 lb blue taking a little over $152,000.00 in winnings. The slower days were towards the end of this report, when we had a couple of days where half of the boats got “skunked”. “Rebecca” had two striped marlin and a sailfish released, as well as three yellowfin on August 8th for The Alvarez family from San Antonio, Texas. “Tracy Ann” had both a blue and striped marlin on the 5th thirty miles out from the Old Lighthouse; the blue took a lure and the striper a live bait. Live bait was again on the scarce side this week, with boats on several days taking just fire or six fish, instead of the normal ten. However, the bait was most effective for striped marlin, so this wasn’t too much of an issue. Pisces anglers caught a total of 19 striped marlin, all but one released, six blue marlin and six sailfish - all released.

OTHER SPECIES:
Yellowfin tuna was king in Cabo this week, with forty six percent of boats catching between one and twelve fish in the 15 to 35 lb class, out total tuna tally for the week was 141 fish. Tuna were caught on both the Cortez and Pacific sides, but the majority of fish were between Land’s End and San Jaime. Cedar plugs, feathers, assorted lures worked for tuna as well as the odd live bait fish. “Rebecca” was the top tuna scorer with 12 and 1 dorado on August 7th, 6-8miles off of Cerro Blanco. Dorado catches were quite a bit of slower, with twenty one percent of boats catching a single fish, in the 20 lb class. There were actually more dorado closer to shore, proven by the fact that some pangas caught up to six in a day. Not a lot of other fish around; we had one wahoo, a hammerhead shark and some skipjacks.