LOTS OF MARLIN AROUND CABO
BUT NOT TOO MANY HUNGRY ONES

Dec. 13-19, 2004, Capt. George Landrum, Fly Hooker Sportfishing, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

It was partly cloudy for most of the week at Cabo San Lucas. At the tail end of the week the clouds moved in and it became very gloomy, but no rain arrived with the cloud cover. The Cabo San Lucas average night time temperature was 67 degrees and our day time highs were in the high 80s.

There was a band of warm water in the 74-degree range along the Pacific coast for most of the week, and it extended off shore only a few miles. Once out there, it dropped and was averaging 71 degrees. There was a cold spot outside the Golden Gate Bank that had temperatures in the high 60s for several days. On the Cortez side of Cabo San Lucas we were looking at temperatures in the 74 range almost everywhere. At the end of the week the surface temperatures were higher as the cloud cover trapped the heat.

Cabo San Lucas had almost all Mackerel bait this week with a few Sardinas as well. Big baits were $2 each while the Sardinas were $20-25 a scoop.

The Cabo San Lucas fishing week started out with a bang on the striped marlin as they seemed to be almost everywhere. The frustrating thing for a lot of Cabo San Lucas charter boats was that while they could be seen all over the place, it was not easy finding fish that were hungry. A lot of Cabo San Lucas Captains said there was too much bait out there and it took a while to find a fish that was not already stuffed! It was not uncommon to see 30 fish a trip, sometimes a lot more than that, and if you were lucky you found a few that would bite. The luckier Cabo San Lucas boats caught and released up to 5 fish per day while the average was more like on, maybe two fish hooked out of 25-30 fish that bait was tossed to. These fish are averaging a bit on the small side with most in the 90-120 pound class, but there are a few nice ones in the 140-160 pound range being hooked as well. Live Pacific Green-backed Mackerel has been the bait of choice, tossed in front of moving fish.

There were more yellowfin found at Cabo San Lucas this week than there were last week, but the big ones have not shown up yet. Almost all the Yellowfin caught this week were football fish or smaller school fish, the largest fish I saw was around 40 pounds. There were reports of a few large fish found out past the San Jaime Banks, but I never did find out who caught them. The fish closer to home were found in Porpoise pods and bit fairly well on small feathers. The best fishing action at Cabo San Lucas this week seemed to be on the Pacific side about 15 miles out, but there was some good action had as well on the Sea of Cortez up around the Gorda Banks. At the Gorda, Sardinas were the ticket for a good catch and for some reason the fish were just a bit larger up there.

Find something floating in the water that has been there for a while and you were almost guaranteed to find a dorado or two around it, but unless you worked very close to shore, that was the only way you could find one. The open ocean, debris associated Dorado seemed to average about 25 pounds and the inshore fish averaged about 12 pounds, but there were twice as many of them inshore! Small feathers trolled at slightly higher than normal speeds accounted for a lot of the inshore fish while live bait did best off shore. There were also a few stray Dorado up to 50 pounds caught by anglers soaking live bait deep for Striped Marlin.

The new moon kicked up the bite on Cabo San Lucas wahoo this week, but there were no really large fish found. The best action came from near shore on the Sea of Cortez side and was concentrated on the Red Hill area and Gray Rock. Almost all the action took place in less than 50 fathoms of water and some boats were able to get three fish a day, with the average size around 35 pounds. Live bait was the best, but only if they were Mackerel Scad, locally called "Chihuiles."

Cabo San Lucas inshore fishing remained slow this week but there are some Sierra beginning to show up. A few scattered Roosterfish and Jack Crevalle round up the major species caught next to the beach and most of the Pangas have been heading out a bit farther looking for Dorado and Striped Marlin.