WEATHER:
Hot, humid and buggy has been our experience on land this week, that's one of the reasons to get out on the water, or in many cases, into the water at the beach. With our daytime highs in the high 90's and occasionally breaking 100 degrees combined with the 80% humidity the flies, bo-bo's (no-see-um's) and mosquitoes have been a big annoyance. This happens every time after we have a big wet spell, but since it has been three years we tend to forget. The skies were mostly sunny late this week with just a few high, passing clouds but it looked as if we might have received some rains in the mountains early in the week as another storm system moved over the peninsula to the north of us and Hurricane John passed to the west.
WATER:
We had a breeze on the Pacific side early in the week that was a result of feeder bands from Hurricane John coming through, and combined with a storm that came in from the mainland conditions were choppy and very bumpy early in the week. On Tuesday we were seeing swells to 12 feet coming in on the beach at Medano, washing right up to the retaining walls at the resorts and washing over the sand berm at the arroyo, filling in the area behind so it became a saltwater pool. This swell, a result of the passing hurricane, fell off very quickly and by the end of the week we had almost flat conditions with swells on the Pacific at 2-4 feet and on the Cortez side at 1-3 feet. Water on the Sea of Cortez has been warm in our area, often in the 89 degree range. Looking at the charts we can see water as warm as 91 degrees up in the East Cape area. Right in front of the Cape the water is 88 degrees but farther to the north along the beach it cools a bit to 84 degrees. Out at the San Jaime and the Golden Gate Banks the water is between 85 and 86 degrees. It is blue water almost everywhere you go as well, with it just a bit deeper in color on the Pacific side.

BAIT:
Caballito and Mullet were available at the normal $3 each and if you went to San Jose and were early it was possible to get Sardinas at $20 a scoop. Most of the bait boats had frozen Horse Ballyhoo available as well at a very proud $3 each.

FISHING:

BILLFISH:
Striped Marlin and Sailfish remained the most common billfish in the area but there were a few Blue Marlin reported hooked and released this week, and a few small one that were caught and brought in, sigh. I heard of no Black Marlin this week but there may have been a few of these fish as well. Most of the Sailfish and Striped Marlin were found just to the south of us by boats looking for Tuna. A few were caught to the east at the 95 spot and many were found between 3 and 10 miles off the beach on the Pacific side. Dropping back a live bait or frozen (then thawed) Ballyhoo to fish appearing in the spread was the most common method that worked this week, throwing a live bait at a tailing or sleeping Striped Marlin came in a distant second as far as working went. It is exciting when a pod of Sailfish appears in the spread and suddenly there is a fish behind every lure!

YELLOWFIN TUNA:
Most of the Tuna caught this week were football sized fish, and later in the week you did not have to go far to find them. The area off of Chileano Beach had a good showing of these Tuna that ranged between 5 and 10 pounds early in the week. As time went on these fish slowly moved toward Cabo. At the end of the week the fish were right in front of the bay. The only difficulty was weeding your way through the numbers of Skipjack and Bonito that were mixed in with them. I was really surprised that with this amount of small tuna out there, there were not a number of Black Marlin hooked up. Maybe it's just a bit early for numbers of these billfish to show up. Offshore, looking for pods of Dolphin was the main method of finding tuna, either that or searching for the Tuna Seiners and their helicopters. There were enough Seiners out there looking to set their nets on fish that you had to get lucky to find fish for yourself. Most of the boats that got decent Tuna found small pods of Dolphin, pods small enough to draw no interest from the helicopters. Flying a kite to take your lure or bait well away from the boat was the most successful method used to catch fish to 150 pounds, but there were not many of these out there (fish I mean). I only hope that these vessels go away soon before they net everything in the area and leave us hoping for a stray tuna.

DORADO:
Fish of the week, and most of them were caught close to the beach on the Pacific side, just as they were last week. Smaller lures in bright colors trolled at 8 to 8 1/2 knots brought them in, keeping the first fish in the water for a while brought in others. Most of the fish were in the 5 to 10 pound class but there were a few larger one to 20 pounds caught inshore as well. The majority of larger ones were caught at least 5 miles from the beach, and finding working Frigate birds was the key to getting more than one shot at fish that came as large as 35 pounds. There were not many of these, but if you worked it there was a chance of two or three in the box. Slow trolling live bait in the area of the Frigates worked well, very few anglers were willing to risk the chance of loosing a large Dorado by leaving one of them in the water as a teaser for more.

INSHORE:
Inshore currents were variable this week and bottom fishing was scratchy as a result. The water is clearing up and the inshore catch was a mix of Roosterfish, Amberjack, a few Snapper and a couple of Grouper. Most of the pangas were going for the football Tuna and venturing a bit farther out for Dorado and Sailfish.

NOTES:
Off to the beach in a few minutes to get in some quality time before football! Sunday morning breakfast and Bloody Mary's when we get back from the beach. Think I'll fix up some Sashimi from our tuna as a snack! My music for this weeks report was something I have not listened to for a long time, a bit of reggae from a local band, Rhythm Force, off their self-titled album published about 10 years ago.

Until next week, tight lines!