WEATHER:
Hot, humid with occasional afternoon breezes. Wow, that says it, right? We have been around 84-86 degrees in the coolest part of the early morning and just pushing the 100 degree mark in the late afternoon. Join that with a bit of scattered cloud cover late in the week, with just a bit of a breeze and it is livable, but not really comfortable. The best place to be is on the water since the air temperature is about 10 degrees less out there.

WATER:
Still warm, almost everywhere you wanted to go on the Cortez side of the Cape it was 88 degrees with small swells. On the Pacific side there was a slow change in the water temps as you went offshore but no sharp breaks. Out at the San Jaime the warm water continued at 86-87 degrees, for another 6 miles to the west it dropped to 84 degrees and then down to 80 degrees, a slow and gradual change. On the Pacific side the swells were slightly larger at 3-6 feet and we did have a couple of days late in the week when the breeze picked up around noon and got things a bit choppy.

BAIT:
Caballito and Mullet were the baits of the week with no Mackerel being found due to the warm waters. Everything was the normal $3 per bait. There were also some decent Sardinas to the north around Palmilla at $25 a scoop.

FISHING:

BILLFISH:
With the warm water come the Blue and Black Marlin, except this year the Black Marlin seem a bit slow to show up. By this time last year there were plenty of them out there, this year so far it has been almost only Blue Marlin when it comes to the big fish. We had a client on a Panga the other day who fought an estimated #450 fish for 4 hours before having the line break when the fish was 6 feet below the boat. Heck, they were going to release it anyway, but what a fight that must have been. I keep hearing of a few large fish every week, and I know that a few have been brought in, yes, some people still kill the big ones even though it is not a tournament, sigh. There are still some Striped Marlin being caught as well, but no as many as a few weeks ago. As the water warms up these fish tend to move on or start staying deeper in the water column. A billfish that has replaced the Striped Marlin is the Pacific Sailfish! Quite a few of these have been caught this week, they love the warm water! These have been nice sized Sailfish as well with an average size of 80#. One client caught one just over 100 pounds, as well as a small wahoo during his Panga trip this week. See, you don't have to have a large boat to catch a large fish, but if you like a bit more comfortable ride and a bathroom the larger boats are sure nice! All the billfish have been scattered, when the water is the same temperature everywhere you start looking for structure and current lines instead of temp breaks.

YELLOWFIN TUNA:
The bite for Yellowfin slowed down a bit from last week as instead of getting limits, boats were only getting 3 to 6 fish per trip, that is is they were looking for Tuna. The good news is there were some real quality fish out there, as in fish over 150 lbs!. Not every day of course, for every boat, but at least one boat every day was getting one of these big tuna. The average size was just 25-30 pounds, and if you kept working the school there was a fair chance of hanging one that weighed in the 100 pound class. We had three clients this week who got into a school like that and ended up with two fish between 80-100 pounds and five at around 30 pounds. For a lot of the boats the larger fish have come as a result of fishing from kites or on live bait drop-backs after hooking up one of the smaller fish. Most of the action has come from either directly south or on the Pacific side. The schools move around a lot so finding porpoise has been the key to finding the fish.

DORADO:
There have been plenty of Dorado this week, but most of them have been small, a good indicator of things to come since they grow so fast, but that is dependent on the little guys being released! Most of these smaller fish have been found close to the beach, and you really have to week through the Skip-jack to get them, and then you have to weed through the Dorado to fins ones larger enough to have some meat on them. As an example, out of four Dorado kept that weighed 10-12 pounds, there were 10 fish released that were 5-6 pounds and about 30 Skip-jack released. There were larger fish found offshore though not in as large numbers. The fish offshore were averaging 20 pounds with an occasional 50 pound example in there. For the larger fish finding a working Frigate bird and slow trolling a live bait in the area worked well.

WAHOO: There was a scattering of Wahoo in the smaller size range caught this week, mostly by boats working off the beach for the small Dorado. I did not hear of any large Wahoo being caught and the smaller fish were in the 20-25 pound class.

INSHORE:
The inshore fishing has been pretty good this week, but not for the normal species. Usually when you are speaking about inshore you are talking Roosterfish, Snapper, Grouper, Sierra, Yellowtail, etc. This week we did have some Roosterfish but they were not large ones averaging just 15 pounds with a few to 35 pounds. And of course with the warm water we are not seeing any Sierra or Yellowtail. With the swells we were getting mid-week from the passing of Hurricane Eugene to the southwest the water close to the beach was churned up and green so most of the Pangas worked out in depths 250 feet and more, concentrating on the Dorado and Skip-jack. This meant plenty of Dorado, some Wahoo and quite a few Blue Marlin that were in feeding on the Skip-jack. Toss in the occasional pod of porpoise passing close to the beach that had Yellowfin with them and it was actually a nice selection of what are normally offshore fish being caught by the Pangas.

NOTES:
Four days to FOOTBALL! Hit the beach for a walk and swim this morning, came home and washed the dog, fixed the best Bloody Mary's in the world, Mary is fixing bacon and eggs for our brunch, NASCAR at Pocono is on, golf is later and homemade Chile Verde to work on in the afternoon for dinner. What a life! Oh, new music for this week as well! This report was written to the soulful blues of Duke Robillard on his soon to be released new album (don't ask me how I got to hear it) "Low Down and Tore Up" via Stony Plains Records in September. If you want an idea of his sounds, check out the 2006 release "Guitar Grove-A-Rama" and 2009's "Stomp! The blues tonight", both Grammy Award winners! Blues on!

Until next week, tight lines!