WEATHER:
As is typical this time of year, the weather has varied from day to day with some mornings starting out in the high 70's and warming to the high 90's and the next morning the thermometer showing a cooler 65 degrees. What has not changed is the skies, partly cloudy most of the week, really clearing up at the end of the week. We have also had quite high humidity some mornings, enough so that it trickles down the windshields of the cars and leaves clean trails in the dust.

WATER: It's seasonal transition time. Every year from mid May through Junes, sometimes into July, we have strong currents combined with a few very windy days that really move the water around. The last three weeks have been very typical as overnight the water can change 15 degrees and turn from blue to green, then red and almost brown, sometimes in mile wide bands and sometimes it seems the whole ocean changes. This week, even though the water started to warm up from the last strong current change, it became filled with chlorophyll and we have had dirty, off-color water most of the week. The only places it was decent were at the Cabrillo Bank early in the week and outside to the south 25-30 miles. Water temperatures at the end of the week on the Pacific side ranged from 70 degrees at the San Jaime Bank to 65 degrees at the Golden Gate Bank. The water was almost brown out to 50 miles west. In the Sea of Cortez we were recording 75 degree water inside the 1,000 fathom line and 65 degrees outside of the line. The water was off-color, very dirty green on the outside and almost brown inside 5 miles.

BAIT: Caballito were the bait most boats were able to get this week, and at the normal $3 each. Some of the bait boats were carrying a few partially frozen Ballyhoo as well, at the same price. The dirty water made netting Sardinas almost impossible.

FISHING:

BILLFISH:
There have been a few Striped Marlin caught every day, but there have been no real numbers posted by any of the boats. The water is a perfect temperature, but dirty enough that the bait is not holding so the fish are not around. My guess is that maybe 30% of the boats going out are spotting Striped Marlin, and 10% of them are getting a fish to the boat for a release. Most of these fish have been found to the north-east in the Sea of Cortez.

YELLOWFIN TUNA:
There were no Yellowfin reported by the boats fishing out of Cabo, but I did hear of a few boats fishing out of San Jose who managed to get a fish here and a fish there among the black Porpoise, but there was nothing consistent, even though the fish ranged from 30 to 50 pounds.

DORADO:
What can I saw, things change week to week. Last week some boats posted nice Dorado, and a few boats found more than one or two, but this week the dirty water chased most of them away. There were a few caught, and they were nice fish found off-shore in the Sea of Cortez.

WAHOO:
No Hoo that I heard of this week. Probably the dirty water shut the bite off, it should be good as we are just coming off the full moon, which was on the 4th.

INSHORE:
At the beginning of the week the inshore action slowed up and it has not yet recovered to the levels we had several weeks ago. Everyone is mentioning the dirty water as being the cause and it probably is. A good trip on a Panga this week would be a couple of Sierra, a couple of Yellowtail and maybe a Snapper or two. An average trip would have been half of that. There was a sporadic bite from Roosterfish early in the week, but that died off quickly. Most pangas are working the bottom with bait in hopes of getting a few nice Amberjack and Grouper, and if they get lucky scoring on a Yellowtail.

NOTES:
Sort of a repeat of last weeks notes to the effect that I am frustrated about the quality of fishing we are having this week. Things can change overnight though, and we are used to this happening at this time of year. On a positive note, even though it's not about fishing, the highway between San Jose and Cabo is looking really nice, the government obviously intends to present a grand image to all the visitors who will be attending the G20 this month. Along with the highway, our city is finally placing the power lines downtown underground and removing the wooden power poles, I can only hope that the phone lines follow! Well, it's Sunday, so off to the beach in a little while, meanwhile I have been listening to the puppy snore at my feet!

Until next week, tight lines!