The striped marlin bite, as well as blue and black marlin bite, slowed this week. It may have something to do with the full moon. As the water cooled, we expected the big girls to slow down but the striped marlin should be picking up. Maybe soon the big groups will start to show. The fish that were caught were found on the Pacific side fairly close to the beach by boats looking for dorado. A few boats did all right, releasing two or three fish per trip, but we have not yet seen the numbers of fish as we have over the past three years.

Yellowfin were scattered, some fish were found as close as two miles from the lighthouse and others were out 30+ miles to the west. Almost all the fish were found with porpoise; there were a few unassociated schools found but it was hard to keep on the fish without the mammals to show you where they were headed. Most of the fish caught were football to school size fish, from 8 to 40 pounds with an occasional 60 to 80 pound fish in the mix. The few boats that got to the schools first did all right with an occasional larger fish to 130 pounds. At the end of the week the bite slowed down and the fish were harder to find.

The dorado bite was wide open early on. Boats were catching all they could handle and were releasing anything under 10 pounds. Later in the week the water started to cool and the bite slowed down. With the moon getting larger the bite moved to the afternoon as well so it often seemed that there were no more dorado around. Even with the slow bite late in the week, most of the boats were able to catch near-limits of fish averaging 12 pounds.

The full moon brought the wahoo bite back and there were more fish found late in the week than earlier in the week. Most of the fish averaged 30 pounds and were found near the points by boats working for dorado.

With the great water conditions most of the pangas were trying their best to put clients on the dorado and tuna early in the week. At the end of the week the morning boats returned to the near shore ground and targeted roosterfish, sierra and snapper. Most of the roosterfish were on the small size with an average of 10 pounds but there were some 30 to 40 pound-class fish found in the Cabo bay near the RIU resort beach. The sierra were small at an average of four pounds and were found farther up the Cortez side of the Cape. The main species of snapper found this week were the smaller yellowtail snapper along with a few cubera and barred pargo