Fish Report for 8-1-2011

Good Billfish Activity, but the fish are smaller in Cabo

8-1-2011
George Landrum

WEATHER:
I got up this morning to 84 degrees and 80% humidity, whew, good thing the fan was on! Our nights have been warm like that this week, and the days even warmer. With a few days of partly cloudy skies, the best place to be was out on the water, at least there was a little breeze outside on the Pacific! We have a tropical depression forming to the south of us, five-E, that is projected to stay well south but form into a hurricane on Wednesday. We will probably get some surf again, but like the last one, no rain.

WATER:
Warm water has come our way! With an average of 87 degrees on the Cortez side of the Cape, it actually rose above 91 degrees up at the East Cape in a few areas. On the Pacific side here we have warm water wrapping around the Cape and working it's way to the north. 83 degree water is inside of the San Jaime Bank and across the Golden Gate Bank, and the water outside of there drops down to a cool 80 degrees, and to the south of us if you get outside of 25 miles it drops as low as 75 degrees.

BAIT:
Caballito and Mullet were the baits of the week with a few Mackerel in the mix. Everything was the normal $3 per bait. There were also some decent Sardinas to the north around Palmilla at $25 a scoop.

FISHING:

BILLFISH:

There were plenty of Striped Marlin and quite a few small Blue Marlin and Sailfish showing up this week, but they were not always hungry. The larger fish were scarce this week, and the results of the Bisbee East Cape Tournament bear that out. With 62 teams fishing three days only one fish over 300 pounds was caught. That's 186 fishing days for a Blue Marlin that was just over 500 pounds. Locally there was a small concentration of Striped Marlin just off of Gray Rock between  ? mile and 2 miles. That group of fish was there mid-week but apparently moved off on Saturday. On an interesting note, the Marlin bite seems to have been better in the afternoon this week.

YELLOWFIN TUNA:
Still around and biting! Not every trip resulted in lots of fish, but the boats that were able to get to the dolphin first really had a good chance at fish to 80 pounds this week. Of course most of the fish were smaller than that with an average of 20 pounds, but still, there were some really nice fish being brought in. Most of the action was along the temperature break to the south of us as well as around the San Jaime Bank. Small feathers worked great for the average fish but deep dropped live bait, dropped ahead of slow traveling schools of fish, as well as run under kites seemed to get the larger ones interested.

DORADO:
Once again fish of the week, and we are really happy about that! Most of the action took place on the Pacific side close to the beach and the fish were a decent average of 12 pounds with a few lager showing up. The larger fish were 45-50 pounds and about every third boat managed to get one that size. Best action came on slow trolled live bait, but bright colored medium size lures run at 10 knots managed to get some action and worked well to find the concentrations of fish. My guess is that the boats were averaging 6 fish per trip with the better catches being limits and very few boats not getting any Dorado at all.

WAHOO:
I did not hear of any Wahoo being caught this week.

INSHORE:
Most of the Pangas were focusing on Dorado this week but those that tried for the normal inshore species like Roosterfish, Grouper and Snapper found that the bite was better in the afternoon. Good action was on the Pacific side of the Cape but there was some decent Roosterfish action off of Cabo Real as well. Most of the Roosterfish were smaller ones at 15 pounds but there were a couple of times when schools of 50 pound fish moved in and caused some excitement.

NOTES:
Hot, humid weather, so it's time for a walk on the beach with the puppy, then a swim! Come back home for a good breakfast, a nap, then watch some golf. It's too hot to play after 10 am so sitting in front of the fan watching the last day of the Senior Open sounds pretty good to me!

Yellowfin Bite is on as is Dorado Until next week, tight lines!


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