PISCES FLEET 438-POUND BLUE MARLIN WINS LOS CABOS BILLFISH TOURNAMENT

Oct. 22, 2006, Tracy Ehrenberg, Pisces Fleet, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

The most exciting fishing at Cabo San Lucas this week was for the Los Cabos Billfish Tournament, which took place over three days with 73 boats participating. The first place team fished aboard our boat "Tracy Ann" with team captain Timo Helle, angler Jukka Hassel, Martin Kockritz, and Makku Ahomaa.

As you can probably guess by their names, these anglers are not local. In fact they hail from Finland. We met them at the 2005 Rolex/IGFA tournament, when they expressed an interest to come back to Cabo San Lucas and fish in a fall tournament. These guys fish nearly every weekend for salmon and sea trout and they actually won a tournament in Mauritius two years ago, where, as in this Cabo San Lucas tournament, they were rank outsiders. For this tournament, competing teams came to Cabo from across the United States, Mexico, Canada, Bermuda, New Zealand, and Finland.

This was a particularly good Los Cabos Billfish Tournament for us as Pisces boats took first and second place.

On the Tracy Ann's first fishing day out, they found a floating log and quickly boated four dorado. Jukka, spotted what he thought was a dolphin behind the boat, but the deckhand quickly realized that it was a feeding blue marlin, and he alerted the captain.

They immediately rigged the smallest dorado, which was still alive and dropped it back to the marlin, which gobbled it up in less than a minute. Jukka was patient, giving the fish eight seconds to swallow the bait, before setting the hook. Forty-five minutes later they had the blue marlin on board and headed back to the scales, where they were thrilled to see the weight hit 438 pounds.

This fish was to hold first place throughout the tournament and it gave the team a total of $451,350 dollars in prize money. They generously gave Capt. Ricardo Agundez, who stood in for an ill Julio Castro, ten percent of their winnings and he also received a beautiful Joseph Henry watch.

Second place in this year's Los Cabos fishing tournament went to the boat "Sundancer" captained by Martin "Kiwi" Hutt, with a 344-pound blue marlin caught early the first day for Jimmy Carter from Oklahoma, for total winnings of $194,250.

The third place fish was a 333-pound blue marlin, caught aboard the boat "Crusader" which earned the team just a little over $24,000, as they only entered the tournament category and not the jackpot divisions.

After the first day of this year's tournament, no qualifying fish over 300 pounds came to the scale. Tournament organizers were thrilled to report that not one underweight fish was brought in, and they recognized anglers and crews for their conscientious judgment.

The next tournament up at Cabo San Lucas is the Bisbee's Black & Blue, set to start this Wednesday the October 25th.

However, Tropical Storm Paul is currently threatening our coasts, as it is due to pass within 50 miles of the tip of Baja California. This has everybody jittery, as the port of Cabo San Lucas may be closed. But we've been in this situation several times in the past couple of months and it could miss us completely.

(See "Mexico Fishing News" online for current fishing reports, photos, weather, and water temperatures from Cabo San Lucas and other major Mexican sportfishing areas. Vacation travel articles, fishing maps and seasonal calendars, and fishing related information for Cabo San Lucas may be found at Mexfish.com's main Cabo San Lucas page.