The 80 ? blue water is just a couple of miles off the beach, and the action has been fairly steady for striped marlin, blue marlin, and a few sailfish. However, this is the time of year to expect these kind of results. It is hard to imagine, but for the 30 calendar days starting about May 12, there can be no better blue marlin fishing anywhere in the world than what we have here on this coast.

A few years back I made a study about our marlin fishing in May. The blue marlin outnumbered the striped marlin by about ten to one, plus there were also a few blacks caught. The sport fishing fleet averaged 7.5 strikes a day, with almost four fish a day brought to leader. Historically during this time period, we average a blue marlin per boat for every three days on the water.

Plus, this was done by boats that were basically geared for sailfish, and found themselves sadly under-equipped when the marlin hit. Some boats, like the See-Ya from Cabo San Lucas, spent the fuel money to get here just to sample this action. They specifically targeted marlin and had a great month. Plus, there was an insignificant difference in fish caught between the pangas and the cruisers, proving the fish don't care how fancy the boat is.

For this last week, the super panga, Huntress, with Captain Francisco, only caught one sail at the 16-mile mark, in what owner, Mike Bulkley, described as "beautiful blue water", but they had several marlin strikes also. The Huntress was handicapped by a couple of earthquakes the day before, which really hurts the fishing. Mike also told me there was a lot of the bait-stealing bufeos (boo-fay-ohs) in the area. Almost identical to, but much larger than a porpoise, they are false killer whales, near the top of the food chain, and they can shut off a bite also.

Santiago, on the super panga Gitana, says "fishing is good right now". He fished three days with John Fuller of Chicago, and friends Ben and Sam, releasing seven sailfish, and catching a 180-pound blue marlin. They also had five more sailfish and two striped marlin strikes, but missed them.

Inshore action was tough this last week, as we had huge waves hit the coast from a storm several thousand miles away. The waves were actually washing up into the beachside restaurants, whose tables are on the sand. But, from tracking the waves on the internet, it sure brought in the surfers from all over the world.