MOST CABO SAN LUCAS FISHING BOATS
ARE FLYING MULTIPLE BILLFISH FLAGS

June 27, 2004, Capt. George Landrum, Fly Hooker Sportfishing, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, Mexico:

CABO SAN LUCAS WEATHER: Last week I said that the humidity was starting to get up there, right? Well, it’s here! But we also have this wonderful warmth to go with it as our night time lows have been in the low 70’s and the day time highs in the mid to high 90’s. You get to sweat when you are walking but it makes sitting in the shade with a cool one all the better. Of course, it is a lot more comfortable out fishing! We have had a little bit of cloud cover, no rain and slight winds in the late afternoon.

WATER: Warmer! The coolest water we were finding at Cabo San Lucas at the end of the week was out in the area of the San Jaime and Golden Gate Banks where the surface temperature was in the 77-78 degree range. Everywhere else, both to the south of Cabo San Lucas and up the Sea of Cortez we had water in the 80 to 85 degree range. Good surface conditions everywhere around Cabo San Lucas at the end of the week with slight swells and just a light wind riffle. The water was a great blue color except near home, near shore on the Pacific side where it greened up a little, but it was still not too bad.

BAIT: The usual Caballito at $2 each, some Lisa, a few small Mackerel and no Sardinas

CABO SAN LUCAS FISHING:

BILLFISH: And things just keep getting better! I saw most Cabo San Lucas boats that were flying Billfish flags flying at least two, often four to six flags each as they came in. The fish, at least the Striped Marlin, were close to home, it was not necessary to get more than a mile offshore to get into the action. The really good action early in the week started up around San Jose and moved our way as the week went along. As of the end of the week, right out in front of Punta Ballena and the 95 spot there were Striped Marlin everywhere. The Blues are starting to show up as well and there were some nice fish reported from the area of the Gorda Banks. Hopefully they will be coming closer as well as the weeks go on. Almost all the action this week was on live bait. There were fish coming into the patterns but they were not very aggressive, live bait dropped back seemed to do the trick though.

YELLOWFIN TUNA: The Yellowfin bite around Cabo San Lucas this week picked up as well, and it is a good thing! We still are not having great numbers or really large fish, but a lot of footballs, sometimes enough of them to seem a nuisance if you were running lures that were too small, but quite a few of them were fish in the 20-25 pound range, with fish to 50 pounds showing as well. Most of the bigger fish were a little farther off shore than everything else, and the south side of the San Jaime Banks was a good place to find them, often pin-pointed by the feeding porpoise. Small feathers in dark colors were needed for the footballs if you wanted to catch a lot of them, medium sized lures in almost any color for the bigger fish.

DORADO: It is summertime and that means Dorado time. I have seen a lot of Dorado flags this week and while there have been some small fish in the catch; I have once again seen quite a few fish in that 50 pound range. Of course most of them are around 20 pounds, but that is nothing to sneeze at! Right out in front of Cabo San Lucas, within a mile of the arch and slow trolling live bait seems to be an almost sure bet for the Dorado, but most of the boats are covering more ground by pulling lures until they hook up, then dropping back live bait.

WAHOO: Once again it was not a red hot Wahoo bite, but there were fish being caught out of Cabo San Lucas. Enough red flags were flying that we knew there were fish out there, and I did talk to a few people that hooked up to the toothy speedsters. Most of the fish this week were in the 30-40 pound class, and caught close to shore. I went out with a couple of friends on the 30th, just for fun as it was my birthday, and we tagged and released two Striped Marlin and had hard strikes from two Wahoo as well. All this action happened between 9 am and 11 am on the Sea of Cortez side between Punta Ballena and the Westin.

INSHORE: This week was a repeat of last week’s inshore report with the exception that more Roosterfish are showing up. Most of the inshore fishing was on hold this week as the Pelagics showed up so close to the beach that no one wanted to go for Roosterfish and Jacks when there were Dorado, Marlin and Tuna right there! For the few Cabo San Lucas boats that did try, the bite on Roosterfish was on the Pacific up past the lighthouse as the Mullet followed the water change.