WEATHER: Summertime is here! Our nights had low temperatures in the mid 70's this week with our high on Saturday of 100 degrees, but for most of the week it was in the mid 90's. There has been a light breeze in town from the northwest that keeps it from being stifling, and it has been a cool breeze since it is being blown across the cool Pacific water. We had no rain this week and had beautiful clear skies.

WATER: Water temperatures across the region stayed pretty much the same all week long. On the Cortez side of the Cape we say water averaging 79 degrees early in the week and 80 degrees later on with the warmest water occurring later in the week at 83 degrees between the Gorda Banks and the Cabrilla Seamount. Most of this warm water has been between the shore and out to just past the 1,000-fathom line. On the Pacific side it has been cooler and the water has been green. From Cabo Falso out to and across the San Jaime Bank the water has been averaging 65 degrees and has been very green. Between the 1,000-fathom line to the south of the San Jaime to a line directly to the south of Cabo the water has averaged 74 degrees.

BAIT: There was a decent mix of small and large Caballito and Mackerel as well as some Mullet this week at the normal $3 per bait.

FISHING:

BILLFISH: All those Striped Marlin that we were seeing last week that would not eat a bait decided to get hungry this week. Not only that, they decided top move closer to us! The bite was going off only 1 to 4 miles off the arch during the later half of the week.. There were Marlin everywhere you looked, tailers here and there, jumpers everywhere and groups of fish schooled up. The largest group I saw was 15 fish within a 30 yard circle, two on the surface and the others just underneath. They were biting well on live and dead baits, we had hooked one on a live bait and were clearing a rigged dead bait, just letting it hang back about ten feet when it was attacked by a brightly lit Striper! There were reports on the radio of a few small Blue Marlin being caught as well, but I don't have any hard information on them. That is not hard to believe though since we have that warm water out there.

YELLOWFIN TUNA: The Tuna bite was still slow this week but there were reports of some fish being caught over the weekend among porpoise just five miles south of the arch. I saw those Porpoise while fishing off a Panga as a guest and we pulled lures through them with no results, but there were a couple of boats hooked up to fish of some kind. There were also some decent fish in the 25-30 pound class reported being caught outside the Gorda Banks up to the Vinorama area up the Sea of Cortez.

DORADO: Some decent sized Dorado were caught this week up in the warm water in the Sea of Cortez. The large fish were 40-50 pounds with fair numbers in the 20-pound class. Close to shore there were good numbers of small fish in the 6-10 pound range. The best lure we ran was a bullet head in pink/white but other anglers had good luck with green/white and bleeding mackerel. Most boats that got away from the Marlin and made Dorado a target were able to get a couple of fish per boat, not great numbers yet, but with some quality fish in there.

WAHOO: The full moon appeared to make a difference this week. There were no reports of fish the week before but in the past five days I have heard of quite a few decent Wahoo to 40 pounds being caught. Fishing fairly close to the beach in less than 150 feet of water brought the most bites, but the fish were a little smaller than the fish caught incidentally offshore. There was a good bit on fish in the 15-20 pound class up at the Inman Bank according to a few fishermen that went there and targeted Wahoo. They had their best luck with slow trolled live baits.

INSHORE: We had a good surprise this week with the inshore fishing. I actually fished off a Panga five days this past week and on two of those days we were able to get Snook. Snook only show up in our area for a very, very short period and it was my luck to be on the water when it happened. I fished on Tuesday through Saturday, the first three days with my sister-in-law, Ellie Crocker, a teacher of outdoors activities and physical education at Lanier Middle School in Houston, Texas. Tuesday we caught five nice red snapper, the largest about 15 pounds and then tried for the Snook. Ellie caught on that weighed 31.83 pounds and another of about 28 pounds. Casting live Caballito into the impact zone right where the rocks and the beach met resulted in the Snook ambushing the bait as they swam out of the bubbles and swirling sand. On Wednesday we went back and Ellie caught two more about the same size and I was able to get a chance and caught my first Snook. Of course it was smaller than any of hers! Then on Thursday we went for Roosterfish and caught 8 out of twelve that bit. Friday I fished with some friends from New Jersey for Snook with no luck in the first two hours so we went offshore and released two Striped Marlin of about 130 pounds each. Saturday was another two hours trying for Snook with the owner of "Eat Me" lures with no luck so we went looking for Dorado and ended up with two small fish. There were a few Yellowtail and a few Sierra caught and as the week came to an end the Snapper bite dropped off a bit.

Notes: The water is warming up and the fishing is getting better every week. Now if the Yellowfin would just show up in good numbers things would be great! On the golf front, as a side note, most of the courses had dropped their prices for the summer and it is now affordable to play once in a while. I just played Cabo Real and had a great time except for the greens, they were so fast it was unfair! All in all though, I was happy with my 96. This weeks report was written to the music of Jack Johnson once again, this time on the soundtrack to the movie "Curious George".