Golden Gate, Punta Gorda, Jamie Banks

October 27th to November 2nd 2006

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear, sunny skies, seas calm close to Cabo, a little rough further up the Pacific

AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 83F

BEST LURES: Live bait

BILLFISH
In the first few days of this report, boats did well on billfish with forty percent of charters finding mostly striped marlin, as well as the odd sailfish and blue marlin. Top marlin boat was “Ni Modo” with six striped marlin released, plus one smallish wahoo and one tuna boated for Nolan Draney, who visits Cabo every year to fish at least five days with captain Jobe. All of these catches were on the Pacific at Migriño. “Tracy Ann” also did really well on October 30th, releasing four striped marlin for Norman and Nathan McPeek from Buttle, fishing with Brian and Carrie Motlan from Sherwood, Oregon – they fished a little beyond the Golden Gate, also on the Pacific. A group from Fenton, Mi, were pleased with their three striped marlin released at Golden Gate on the 27th of October aboard “No Big Deal”. “Valerie” and “Cabolero” both released blue marlin between 200 and 300 lbs, just five miles off of the Old Lighthouse. Some big sailfish were reported, as large as 180 lbs. Basically the marlin fishing was quite consistent throughout the week with just a couple of slower days November 1st and 2nd, when boats began scouting for tuna, for the jackpot event that was to take place on the 2nd and 3rd. Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was seventy seven percent. Pisces anglers caught a total of 45 striped marlin, 3 blue marlin and 7 sailfish…all were released.

OTHER SPECIES:
The big story this week was the Western Outdoor News Tuna Jackpot Tournament. We love this event as it gives anyone that has dreamed of entering a fishing tournament a chance to experience this type of event at an affordable price. The tournament is fun with rules that are not rigid and offering jackpot divisions ranging from $250.00 to $5,000.00. This year’s event drew a total of 125 boats, mostly local charter vessels and we were thrilled to take first place with “Ni Modo” for a 318 lb yellowfin tuna, which is a new tournament record. Anglers Jamie Greer, dad David Greer, Lance Gildner and Dave Dunton all from Dayton, Ohio, were thrilled albeit tired by this monster, which took a little over four hours to boat between all four of them. They had lost another huge fish after an hour and a half fight, when, the crew spotted this fish and dropped a live skipjack back to it, close to the Gordo Banks. They fought the fish stand up and towards the end of the fight, could only handle two or three minutes each, before having to hand the rod over to a teammate. This fish was caught on day one and set the bar extremely high, which is probably why it held out to take first place. The fish earned them $152,620.00 for first place. They were not entered in all the jackpot divisions, so the second place fish a very respectable 204 lbs, caught aboard Reel n Deal, actually won a bit more; $169,729.00 was their payout. Other prizewinners were La Leona for a 46.2 lb tuna that earned $50,000.00, Piranha for a 75.1 lb fish that earned $54,000.00 and Eureka with a 140.5 lb for $52,460.00.

This event is very well run, is a lot of fun and well worth entering, however, anybody interested in entering needs to book now to get the better boats (most of our vessels are already booked for the 2007 event already). We were pleased with the results of the tuna tournament, because honestly speaking, going in, there were not a lot of tuna being caught in the weeks preceding the tournament, however, this was one of most productive tournaments in this events eight year history. Our tuna catch success rate this week was 19% with catches of between one and eight fish, ranging from 20 to 50 lbs. We had a nice 97 lb tuna aboard “Adriana” by our dockmaster Mario Bañaga, which ended up in 5th place overall. Dorado catches were good with a 30% success rate on this species. Inshore we had some nice roosterfish catches, such as a total of eight roosters between 15 and 30 lbs for Bruce Canduff from England.