Our wonderful weather continued this week with lows in the low 70's and most of the days in the high 80's with the exception of Friday, when we had 98 degrees in the center of town. For the most part the wind was mild, the two day of the Los Cabos Tuna Jackpot tournament, Thursday and Friday. We had the wind switch almost 180 degrees and come from the southeast instead of the normal northwest, and it blew at a pretty good clip. Surface conditions on both the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific side were great all week long, with the exception of Thursday and Friday when the wind changed direction. On those days were were seeing steady whitecaps and rollers, the Port Captain closed the port to small craft traffic on Thursday afternoon when a water taxi rolled over in the surf at Medano beach, thankfully no one was hurt. The rest of the week we had normal northwest winds at 8-12 knots, causing light chop on the Pacific side and almost nothing on the Cortez side of the Cape. At the end of the week we had an intrusion of cool 77 degree water pushing our way from the south, and coming at us just to the east of Cabo, between Cabo and San Jose. This intrusion has caused the warm water there into a small band of 80-81 degree water between the shoreline and the 95 Spot and the 1150. Just on top of the Cabrillo Seamount has been a warm spot of 84 degree water and it is now being pushed to the east. From Cabo San Lucas to 15 miles west of the San Jaime Banks, and to the south of there has been warm water at 81-82 degrees. North of the San Jaime, across the Golden Gate Bank and up the coast to the Finger Bank the water has been 75-77 degrees. Caballito were available at $3 each as were mullet. There were small Sardinas as well at around $30 a scoop. We were seeing a few more Striped Marlin beginning to show up in the catch reports this week. Not everyone was able to get one on the end of their line, but the success ratio seemed a bit higher than the last two weeks. This may be due to the slightly cooler water we are seeing now, much more preferred by the Stripey than the warm 80+ degree water. The bite was off on Blue and Black Marlin and probably for the same reason, cooler water, but also because there was so much attention and effort placed on Yellowfin Tuna this week.

As I thought last week, the amount and size of the Yellowfin Tuna we had been seeing resulted in a great Los Cabos Tuna Jackpot Tournament. I was surprised, as were many people, that there was only one fish weighed over 200 pounds, after seeing several 300 pound fish come in last week, but there were reports of very large fish being broken off. Most of the fish seemed to come from one of two area. Our usual cow tuna grounds this time of year is the outer Gorda Bank, and it continued to deserve its reputation as there were quite a few qualifying fish from there, but the number of boats and the small area, combined in the switch in wind direction made the success ratio a bit smaller than most boats would have liked. The other are that produced well was the temperature break to the west of the San Jaime Banks. There were scattered Porpoise pods all over the place, instead of finding just one or two to work, many boats were finding six or seven pods a day to check out. As usual, the big fish were caught on a mix of methods with live bait on down-riggers working well, live bait and artificials under kites working on the shy fish and lures getting the ones that were not so shy. The largest fish of the tournament was #208, there were two fish in the #180 class, around five or six fish in the 150-140 pound class and uncountable fish in the #100 category. It got the point very quickly that if your fish did not eyeball out at over 100 pounds you could not weigh it, there were plenty of larger fish to get up to the stage. Dorado were a big disappointment this week as there were no large fish caught. The Tuna Tournament had a side jackpot for the largest Dorado or Wahoo of the tournament, the fish had to be over 30 pounds. There were no Dorado entered. The fleet boats did well on Dorado, but mostly fish that averaged 12 pounds, and most of them were found on the Pacific side along the coast.

There were a few nice Wahoo brought in this week, and the winner of the side jackpot at the tuna tournament weighed in at a very respectable 58 pounds! Most of the fish brought in were in the 25-30 pound range and were found along the edges of the banks. Roosterfish in the petite size, Lady fish, decent sized Sierra, small Yellowfin, Bonito, Skip jack, occasional Snapper and Grouper along with a patchwork of Dorado and Striped Marlin made up most of the inshore catch this week. Most of the effort took place on the Pacific side of the Cape and for shear numbers, Sierra were the fish of the week inshore. If you are getting your own fishing licenses, you must have pesos. The people that sell the licenses around the marina can no longer take dollars from anyone. Get pesos the day before. No one has change for your US $100 at 6AM.