Striped marlin are being caught, but not in numbers to get excited about. Fish were seen close to the shore in the greenish water on the Cortez side, and anglers bottom fishing for grouper and snapper who dropped a live mackerel halfway to the bottom in 150 feet of water hooked two marlin, releasing one and losing the other. Other boats were seeing one here and one there on the surface in the same type of conditions. There was no consistent bite nor was there any regularity to the areas they were being found.

Well, the yellowfin had some regularity to where they were being found, and that was way out there! Most of the fish found this week were from football size to 30 pounds and it was a long run for a consistent bite! While there were fish found as close as 18 miles due south and 24 miles at 210 degrees, most of the action has been due east 35 miles or due south at 40 miles, a long two-hour run for the charters. If you got into the right porpoise pod, the action was 'hot and heavy', but there were a lot of pods with no fish. If you did happen to be in the right ones, almost anything was working, from feathers to marlin lures to cedar plugs.

Dorado seemed to be missing in action this week. While boats were able to find the type of debris that would normally hold these fish (weed lines, dead seals, wood), there were few if any fish under any of them.

Inshore fishing provided the most consistent action. Though not large, there was an abundance of fish. The most common catch was sierra and most boats did not have any problem limiting out on them. Small swimming plugs, hootchies and live sardina, all rigged with a small trace of wire leader resulted in plenty of fish in the box. Anglers working yo-yo style jigs on the rocky bottom did well on amberjack to 25 pounds, grouper to 20 pounds and snapper to 20 pounds with an occasional larger specimen of each in the mix. There were also plenty of roosterfish to be had; unfortunately most of them were in the small five pound or less class, but there was an occasional school of 20 to 25 pound fish that gave good action. Yellowtail provided some steady action with fish to 30 pounds for boats that worked the points on the Pacific side, but several shrimp boats put a crimp on the action as they anchored on the schools and had 10 guys hand-lining with shrimp heads as bait. Watching the fish come over the rail one after the other really let you know how many there were in the school.

Whales are still providing a show for everyone, both humpbacks and a few grays are always in view. I don't know if there is any correlation between these things, but along with the warm, green water has come the Humboldt squid. A lot of the boats are stopping to jig up a few of these after a long offshore trip just to get something for their anglers to pull on. Spot the bird piles working just off the surface and you can see the squid. Pull up so that your lures sink and pretty soon you are hooked up. Don't get inked though, it's pretty nasty to get off...George and Mary Landrum