BILLFISH: Very little changed this week on the marlin front with most of the fish being found along the shore off of Palmilla and San Jose. They had moved toward us early in the week but the influx of cooler water from the Pacific side pushed them back toward the north. They are still not biting very well and it seems lures are working better than live bait for the most part. Pulling lures at slightly higher than normal speeds seems to get the fish active, though they may be striking out of aggression rather than hunger as the moon gets larger. A decent trip is one or two releases per boat, a good trip this week would have been three or more releases, but we saw very few boats with more than three.

YELLOWFIN TUNA: I sure saw a lot of tuna flags on some of the boats, but upon checking with the anglers found that the flags were being flown for bonita that averaged 12 pounds in size, with a few reaching 18 pounds?Ķa decent fight to be sure, but not yellowfin by any stretch of the imagination.

DORADO: The dorado bite dropped off as the cool water moved back in, but there were reports heard of some kelp patties being found offshore up in the East Cape area that were holding dorado. In our area there were about 10 % of the boats coming in with dorado flags at the end of the week, and they were found along with the Striped Marlin.

INSHORE: Action inshore consisted of small roosterfish to 10 pounds with an occasional fish to 30 pounds, a few holdover sierra to 8 pounds, a decent spot of grouper and snapper averaging 8 pounds along the rocky points and those nice 12-18 pound Bonita just a few miles off the beach. All the action took place on the Cortez side of the Cape.

Water temperature
67 - 75

Air temperature
59 - 90

Humidity
82%

Wind:
WSW 9 to 12 knots

Conditions:
Mostly Sunny

Visibility
10 miles

Sunrise
6:34 a.m. MST

Sunset
8:05 p.m. MST