WEATHER: We had a couple of days this week when the temperature dropped to 64 degrees early in the morning. For the most part our daytime highs were in the mid to low 80's. We experienced partly cloudy skies to mostly cloudy skies all week and had a couple of days early in the week when we had 10-15 knot winds from the northwest.

WATER: Once again the water remained great for most of the week although we did have a day when the winds blew that the conditions became a bit choppy on the Pacific side. The cloud cover did not allow for any good reading of the surface temperatures but I was out there several times and on the Pacific side we had temperatures of 76-78 degrees around the Golden Gate Bank and cool 72 degree water at the arch. Water was reported warmer on the Cortez side with a decent break running north/south across the 95 spot early in the week, but by all reports that break has broken up and now the water up to the Punta Gorda area has cooled to 76 degrees. Up past Punta Gorda it has remained warmer at 78 to 80 degrees.

BAIT: Caballito were available at the normal $3 per bait, most of them were small ones, Mackerel were a "catch your own at Golden Gate Bank" bait and I still do not know if there are any Sardinas available.

FISHING:

BILLFISH: The fantastic Striped Marlin bite at the Golden Gate Bank continued for another week, but at the end of the week the bite had turned into an afternoon experience as we worked our way through a full moon phase and the fish fed all night. It was common for boats to return after having released half-dozen Stripers and a few boats did double-digit numbers. Along with the Striped Marlin were hordes of seals and sea lions; it was often very difficult to keep your bait away from them as they followed the pods of Marlin around waiting for the bait to be chased up. I overheard a few boats up at the Finger Banks and the activity there pretty much mirrored that at Golden Gate, but there were fewer boats to compete against and there was also the chance of hooking up a bit Yellowfin.

YELLOWFIN TUNA: I know of one boat that did well on Yellowfin this week outside the San Jaime Bank. They got into a pod of Porpoise and were the only boat there, landing 30 Yellowfin to 80 pounds and keeping seven of them. They also said they lost one fish around 180 pounds just before being able to grab the leader. Other than that, there were only occasional fish caught, but there were big fish seen. Early in the morning at the Golden Gate boats were seeing large Tuna estimated at #200+ clearing the water, but that activity was short lived, as soon as several boats had shown up the fish went down. There were still some nice fish reported farther to the north but that was too long a run for most of the boats..

DORADO: The only place that I heard of having a decent Dorado bite was just off the beach between the lighthouse on the Pacific side and the beach to the inside of the Golden Gate Bank. Within a mile of the shore boats were picking up between one and five Dorado, some of them very nice fish around 25 pounds, but most of them around 15 pounds. There were some fish up around the Punta Gorda area from what I overheard, but I could not get any information on numbers or sizes.

WAHOO: This week was a repeat of last week on the Wahoo. There were a few nice Wahoo taken this week ranging in size from 20 to 40 pounds. Most of the action was around the rocky points on the Pacific side or up around Punta Gorda on the Cortez side of the Cape. A few boats working the Finger Bank reported multiple strikes as well while trolling lures. A few fish were reported caught while blind trolling offshore.

INSHORE: A repeat of last week, I saw a few Pangas coming in with nice Sierra to 9 pounds, a few with a lot more fish but smaller in size, a few decent Yellowtail to 25 pounds, a few nice Grouper to 20 pounds. There were quite a few Dorado caught just off the beach as well.

NOTES: No golf for me this week, lots of boat work and a few days fishing instead, but that is a good thing, right? I saw Humpback Whales, Finback Whales and Gray Whales this week. This weeks report was written to the sounds of Led Zeppelin on the 1997 release "Re-mastered", a bit different from my normal fare but it did bring back memories.