WEATHER:?? ?? We had rain every week at the beginning of this year and it is starting to look like we will have it every week at the end of the year as well.?? Our week ended with cloudy skies and one of those beautiful light, soaking rains that are so good for the plants here in the desert.?? It was actually cloudy for most of the week and that kept the temperatures perfect, with our nighttime lows around 64 degrees and our daytime highs in the high 70's.?? It appears that we are at the end of a band of clouds and rain moving up to the northeast and there is a small circulation coming down our direction from the north that will force the remainder of this band of weather to the southeast.

WATER: ?? The cloudy skies this week did not allow very good satellite shots of the sea surface temperature, but what we did get showed what I expected to see, lower temperatures across the region.?? According to the shots, and from seeing the water first hand on both sides of the cape this week, our average temperature on the Pacific side has dropped to 76 degrees, down from the 77 degrees last week.?? At the end of the week it was lower due to the heavy cloud cover.?? On the Cortez side of the cape it seems to have averaged about the same but the warm water extend much farther off shore than the 25-30 miles we saw on the Pacific side.?? At the end of the week the surface conditions on both sides of the cape were excellent, swells at four to six feet on the Pacific side but spaced very far apart and no wind chop.?? On the Cortez side the swells were 1-3 feet and far apart with only a light breeze to ruffle the water.?? The water color almost everywhere you went was tinted green, with a very heavy green cast to it close to shore on the Pacific side.

BAIT: ??Once again there was a pretty good mix of bait with both Mackerel and Caballito available.?? The Mackerel were large ones and many boats opted to catch their own smaller ones if they were going to be fishing the banks on the Pacific side.?? The prices from the bait boats remained the same at $2 per bait.

FISHING:

BILLFISH: ?? This weeks Marlin report is a copy of last weeks report, which was a copy of the week before.?? What this means is that the Striped Marlin fishery is just wide open right now.?? Both the Finger Bank and the Golden Gate Bank continued to deliver massive amounts of Striped Marlin.?? A good day at the Gate resulted in at least two Marlin and some boats were getting seven or eight fish released.?? I fished it on Thursday and released four fish out of 7 raised, and all of them were either on lures or on bait dropped back to fish raised on lures.?? We saw no tailing fish but most of the boats were either drifting bait or slow trolling it, and quite a few were in combat mode, running and gunning for feeding marlin when they forced the bait balls to the surface and the birds started diving.?? A lot of boats tried that, but without a Kevlar armored hull II was not interested.?? The Finger Bank was a double-digit fishery with everyone making the run and having enough bait being able to hook into as many fish as they could handle.?? Reports from the mini-WCBRT tournament of 5 boats on the 7th and 8th were a wide open bite with the top angler releasing 59 Striped Marlin in one day out of the reported 190 releases that day for the top boat and 330 releases for them in two days.?? There were a reported 1,157 Striped Marlin released among the five boats over two days.?? Now is that wide-open fishing or what? Elsewhere the fish were scattered but still available, we had fish from the Punta Gorda area all the way around the Cape.

YELLOWFIN TUNA: ???? The big school of football Yellowfin Tuna we had so much fun with last week moved on and boats returning to the area were lucky to get one fish on Monday.?? There were still a lot of Bonito and Skipjack to be caught but the good stuff disappeared overnight.?? They did show up to the inside of the Inner Gorda Bank at the end of the week but in much smaller numbers and you had to work hard and chum heavily to get a bite happening.?? Once again there were reports of larger fish to the north of us on the Pacific side.?? A minimum run of 60 miles was required and then you had to keep your fingers crossed, but there were reports of fish in the 150-pound class under porpoise.

DORADO: ???? The cool green water has made catching a Dorado a scarce happening.?? A few boats are getting multiple fish but most boats are lucky to get one.?? There was no concentration as the reports were scattered, a few small fish close to shore on the Pacific side in the green water, a few larger fish from the Pacific side banks and a few scattered small fish among the football Tuna on the Cortez side.?? I think the Dorado bite is pretty much ended for the season, but there will still be a fish found once in a while until the end of the year, and by then the water will be too cold.

WAHOO: ?? Not only did I hear of some decent Wahoo being caught this week, I actually got one of them for my anglers!?? It was a fish of 42 pounds and we caught it on a dark green/black straight runner off of the short outrigger position while fishing for the Striped Marlin on the Golden Gate Bank.?? I heard other boats talking over the radio this week and they were reporting an occasional fish as well.?? A few fish were also caught up around the Punta Gorda area.

INSHORE: ?? With the cool water come the Sierra and Yellowtail and both of them were present this week.?? Pangas were working just off the beach from the Arch to the lighthouse on the Pacific side and having great luck with Sierra ranging in size from 2 to 6 pounds.?? Yellowtail were found off of the rocky points.?? Boats fishing with live bait off of the arch ended up feeding the sea lions more often than getting their fish in the boat as the creatures were voracious and would not go away.?? Hey, with all that food swimming around so close, who can blame them!?? The few fish from the arch that actually were brought into the boat were caught on heavier gear while fishing with Rapallas.

Notes:?? Things are really going to get green around here because of the rain we have been getting, so instead of a white Christmas we will have a green one!?? Of course one of the problems with getting this kind of rain is it brings on those big bumbling flies, the ones that are almost too big to fly.?? The Whales are still out there every trip and that is a great thing to see.?? The Seahawks won again and that was a great thing to see!?? I played the 2 CD's from the "Alison Krauss + Union Station Live", 2002 Rounder records release while writing this report and that was a great thing to hear!?? Until next week, I hope great things happen to you and your line stays tight!