WEATHER:?? Up until August 2nd we were enjoying some very non-seasonal weather here in Cabo, it was more like spring with our nighttime lows in the mid 70's and daytime highs in the mid 80's, along with some slight breezes.?? Of course it had to change and now we have the normal situation with daytime highs reaching 99 degrees and on the 4th at 6 am we had 86 degrees here at the house.?? The humidity has kicked in as well and this morning we have a fairly good amount of cloud cover, the result of a small storm system moving across the Sea of Cortez from the mainland and crossing the Baja north of us.

WATER:?? The warm water we have been waiting for has finally arrived!?? On the Sea of Cortez we have had water in the 80-86 degree range while on the Pacific side it has been 78 degrees at the San Jaime Bank.?? Of course we have also had great surface conditions to go with this and it has made for some very good fishing trips!?? Swells have been moderate at 2-5 feet with just a light afternoon chop at the end of the week.?? Earlier in the week there were a couple of days when things got ugly when you returned to Cabo as the winds did pick up strong from the southwest, but it was only late in the day and did not affect many people.??

BAIT: ??There was no problem getting bait this week with plenty of Mackerel, Caballito, Mullet and Sardinas.?? The bigger baits were the normal $2 per bait while the Sardinas were $25 per scoop.

FISHING:

BILLFISH:?? I mentioned on the last report that I would be doing a fair amount of fishing this past week and I did get out for three days.?? I was amazed at the number of Striped Marlin still being caught!?? On Monday we released two small ones and had a few others in the pattern, Wednesday we released one nice fish out of about a dozen hook-ups (they did not want the live bait that day, just toying with it, and we are using single hook rigs on the plastic lures) and on Friday we released two Striped Marlin (a double strike, one on a lure and the other on a drop-back bait) out of 6 bites, one big Sailfish of over #100 out of three bites (all at the same time) and on the way home stopped just outside the bay when we say a free jumping Striped Marlin, trolled a few minutes and hooked, fought and released a small Blue Marlin!?? Now that was a good day!?? All this action has been within 5 miles of the coast on the Sea of Cortez between Palmilla and home, so there was no real need for a long run, all the action was within 12 miles.?? Of course that made it pretty crowded as well so a few of us just kicked it in gear and went farther to the north to escape the crowds and still found good fishing.?? It seemed that except for Wednesday when we had a run of fish that would not eat the bait, the action was evenly divided between artificial lures and live bait.

YELLOWFIN TUNA:?? These fish are still not here in any real numbers of large sizes yet, but I hope that will change any day now.?? The few fish that have been found close to home are still in the "football" category but there have been reports for the last two days of some decent fish in the 20-30 pound class outside of the San Jaime.?? The Bisbee East Cape Tournament had no qualifying fish (over #40) in the Tuna category for the first two days but on the third day a boat fought a fish of #160 for an hour before bringing it to the scale, so there is hope!

DORADO:?? The Dorado action continued to improve as the water warmed and the fish have been a bit larger on average as well.?? We caught a couple of fish this week that were over #40 and it seemed that every other boat returning to the marina had at least one yellow flag flying.

WAHOO:?? Just a few fish were reported this week but I have no information on them, sorry about that, just the rumors.

INSHORE:?? The reports were that the inshore action has been pretty much limited to either Roosterfish or bottom fishing.?? Most of the Pangas have been working on the large number of Striped Marlin, Sailfish and Dorado just off the beach.

NOTES:?? The fishing has improved and that has everybody here happy!?? Now, if the Tuna just make an appearance it will be that much better.?? On a musical note, my friend Daniel Tuchmann has returned from 6 months in Ireland, visiting all the stone circles possible, meeting other musicians and trying to get a little Irish influence into his music.?? It only took him a couple of days to settle back in and now he is playing every Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Hemmingway's, just behind Cabo Wabo.?? An excellent guitarist, he plays covers with his own influence as well as some of his original work.?? Please check out the Billfish Foundation web-page concerning the recently passed shark fishing law in Mexico.