WEATHER:
It's Sunday afternoon and I am a bit late in getting the report written for this week as I was fishing, or at least out on the water, this morning. The last thing I wanted to do was spend time in the engine room working on the water pump for the generator, but at least it was early in the day and I did not have to deal with 112 degrees in the open sun in the parking lot that my wife experienced at 2 in the afternoon! This morning the high, or should I say low, for the morning was a balmy 84 degrees, and you saw what I just wrote as far as how high the temperature rose. The humidity has not been too bad, and we have had some cloud cover for most mornings this week, but it sure burned off by mid-day. No rain this week, as expected, but I thought I saw some clouds dropping a bit up in the mountains towards the East Cape on Saturday. We did experience some wind from the north-west during the middle of the week but it was experienced out on the water, not here in town.

WATER:
I don't think I have seen better conditions on the Cortez side of the Cape since last summer, swells a 1-3 feet, little wind if any with a few short period exceptions and the water has been an average of 86 degrees in our area, a bit warmer up toward the East Cape. On the Pacific side it has been a bit of a different story however. The water temperature and clarity has been fluctuating a lot, mostly due to the currents. There has been an area of cool, 75 degree water showing up between the beach inside the Golden Gate Bank and extending to the southeast, sometimes wrapping around to the 95 spot. Not only cool, it has also been green, sometimes dirty green but mostly a clean green color. It has extended offshore as far as across the San Jaime Banks and running down along the 1,000 fathom line. Localized wind have made this area a bit uncomfortable to fish, choppy and cold when going out another 12 miles often ends up being much more comfortable and with better water to fish in. That being said, look down farther in the report to see what has been in this water.

BAIT:
Caballito and Mullet were available at the normal $3 per bait and you could get them if you were out early, many boats were unable to get bait and had to settle for frozen horse ballyhoo at $3 each.

FISHING:

BILLFISH:
Locally we had pretty decent Marlin fishing, however up in the area of the East Cape the fishing was a bit different. We would have thought that with the warmer, bluer water up there that the 61 boats fishing the 3 day tournament would have produced a few more fish. After all that is 183 fishing days. Unfortunately there were no fish brought in that qualified for the 300 pound minimum weight. There were several underweight fish brought in and the results of the tournament were 48 Striped Marlin, 29 Blue Marlin, 1 Black Marlin and 14 Sailfish for an average of 1.5 billfish per team. The day prior to the tournament starting, here in Cabo a Blue Marlin weighing over 700 pounds was brought in to the scales, and the day after the tournament a nice Black Marlin estimated at 550 pounds (by a Captain who knows his fish) was caught on live bait. I also heard one Captain (who may have been telling fish stories on the radio) say that he had hooked for a very short time (one jump to be exact) a Blue Marlin on a blind strike that was estimated at being near 1,000 pounds. I fished three days locally on the Sea of Cortez side and only managed to get one Sailfish up into the lures, but had clients who did much better than that. On the Pacific side there were Blue Marlin being found offshore in the blue water and Striped Marlin being found in the cooler green water next to the beach.

YELLOWFIN TUNA:
While I did not hear of any large Tuna being caught near home this week, there were several very nice fish, two over 200 pound and one over 100 pounds caught during the East Cape Bisbee tournament. There were large fish reported at the Inman bank just of the north of Punta Gorda, but they were very finicky and rarely came up except after most of the boats were gone in the afternoons. Slow trolled live Bolito hooked a few of these cows. Near to home it was a matter of finding the right pod of Dolphin to fish, with the Spotted Dolphin and the White Bellied Dolphin holding Yellowfin to 40 pounds with most of the fish in the 15-20 pound class. A great catch for most of the boats was a limit of five Tuna per angler, but it was great because few boats were able to manage that! Instead, the average catch was two to three fish per angler with at least on of them going 30 pounds. The area offshore on the Pacific side from just inside the San Jaime Bank to 10 miles to the west of there produced most of these fish.

DORADO: Once again I saw a lot of small Dorado this week, and we released a few ourselves! Near the beach they were quite common, at least on the Pacific side. In the area of San Jose they could be found close to the beach as well. For larger fish the area offshore in the warmer water on the Pacific seemed to produce a few fish to 35 pounds, we had clients who managed to get a couple of these fish each day as well as some of the smaller ones. Up at the East Cape Tournament there were a few very nice Dorado brought in, the largest was 57 pounds and there were 13 total over 30 pounds.

WAHOO:
I know the Wahoo bite was decent this week because even I was able to catch one! Heck, I used to catch these guys for a living commercially when I lived in Guam, but I have a hard time figuring them out here. My fish was a triple strike with just one hooking up, and it was out in the open water with no structure near. Other fish were caught in the fifty fathom flats off of Punta Gorda as well as out in the open warm water on the Pacific side. I didn't hear of any really large fish this week, ours was about 25 pounds and that sounded about average.

INSHORE:
Amberjack, Roosterfish and a few Grouper were pretty much the inshore action this week. For anglers fishing fly gear or light tackle there was a good bite on nice sized Skipjack as well.

NOTES:
Music of the week: Rascal Flatts and a bit of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, not bad fishing music! Oh and toss in some Oak Ridge Boys as well. Country kind of week for me! I hope the fishing stays good and I really hope that y'all get a chance to come and try it! Until next week, tight lines!