Weather: We had great weather this week with the daytime highs in the high 80's and the nighttime lows in the mid 70's.. Mostly sunny skies with just light breezes from the east mostly, with the winds shifting and coming from the northwest at a fairly brisk pace at the end of the week.

Water: Surface conditions on both the Pacific side and the Sea of Cortez were great this week with the exception of the last day of the week as the wind started to blow in the night and the water chopped up on the Pacific side. On the Cortez side the water was calm with swells at their normal 1-3 feet and afternoon breezes from the east causing a very light chop mid-week. The big change from last week was in the water temperatures. On the Pacific side from the Cape to the San Jaime there was a temperature break of about 3 degrees with the water to the south warmer at 70 degrees and the water to the north a cooler 67 degrees. The exact same situation occurred up at Punta Gorda in the Vinorama area with the northern water just a degree cooler at 66 degrees. There was a warm spot that popped up on Saturday at the 1150 that registered 77 degrees and a few boats that became aware went in that direction to check it out but it had spread out and disappeared by late afternoon.

Bait: Caballito, a few Mackerel and a scattering of misc. other large baits could be bought at $3 each and if you were quick and lucky you could get a scoop of Sardinas for $25.

Fishing

Billfish: Well, I don't know if it is because of the full moon or not, but there seems to be a few more Marlin biting this past week that we have had for the weeks prior. We had clients that were seeing fish every day, and hooking up to them, but only about half of those hooked up were making it to the boat for a release. Our best day of fishing this week on Marlin was two fish released for two hooked up. One of them was a very decent estimated #160 Striped Marlin, the other the usual #110. Both fish were caught on slow trolled dead bait, and both were within 10 miles of the lighthouse on the Pacific side. This area seems to have had the majority of fish spotted this week, but they are still not very hungry. A few Swordfish were seen on the surface as well, but boats trying to drop bait down for them were having an issue with strong sub-surface currents and could not get the baits deep enough, finding some Thresher Sharks instead. There were also a large number of juvenile Mako Sharks out there, this cool water seems to be when they show up. Most of them were in the 15-40 pound class and they could be seen jumping and flipping out of the water on occasion.

Yellowfin Tuna: The Yellowfin Tuna bite had been decent if you were in the right place at the right time. The problem was that getting those two things at the same time seemed to be pretty much a crap-shoot. A lot of boats were able to find Porpoise that were holding great meter marks of Tuna, but could not get a bite to save their lives. Some of these pods of fish were within a few miles of the beach, others were over 30+ miles offshore. There seemed to be a decent bite to the north on the Sea of Cortez off of San Jose, and some of the fish were a decent 30 pounds, but for the most part the fish that were found were footballs of 10-18 pounds, and a decent catch was a few fish per boat.

Dorado: There were a few more Dorado flags this week, but almost all of them were very small fish, less than 6 pounds. They were caught by boats working inshore for Sierra, as there were always lots of red flags, as well as release flags underneath. Unfortunately we did see a large number of these small fish leave the docks in bags being carried by the crews.

Wahoo: Almost no Wahoo to speak of, although I did hear of a few fish to 30 pounds caught up off the Punta Gorda area early in the week.

Inshore: It seems as if the Sierra have moved up the Pacific coast just a little bit. During the middle of the week a few Pangas were crying that they could not find any, but others were reporting good results just past Migraino. The same situation occurred for the Yellowtail as the bite dropped off on them as well as they continued to move around. Right place, right time and fish that averaged 15 pounds and went up to 30 pounds were bending rods, if you were not lucky then your wrists and arms hurt from yo-yo'ing for hours on small spots of fish. A few nice Pargo and other snapper were caught in the rocks and there was a scattering of other species such as Needle fish, bonito and grouper. The best live baits were Sardinas for the Sierra, rigged on a very light bite wire, and Caballito for the Pargo and grouper.