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 big 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+ pounds clearing the water, but that activity was short lived; as soon as several boats had shown up the fish went down.

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.

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.

Water temperature: 73 - 82
Air temperature: 63 - 83
Humidity: 83%
Wind: WNW 6 to 8 knots
Conditions: Mostly Cloudy
Visibility: 10 miles
Sunrise: 6:55 a.m. MST
Sunset: 5:38 p.m. MST