PISCES FLEET BOATS RELEASE
118 OF 121 STRIPED MARLIN LANDED

Jan. 7-13, 2005, Tracy Ehrenberg, Pisces Fleet, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

We had a pretty fantastic fishing week here in Cabo San Lucas, with lots of striped marlin, as Pisces anglers totaled 121 of them for the past seven days. Of the striped marlin landed by Pisces anglers 118 were released.

Cabo San Lucas charter boat fishing was great nearly every day, with only a few exceptions on windy, colder days when fish didn't bite as well, or when anglers couldn't take the seas, preferring to turn back.

A total of 75 percent of our Cabo San Lucas boats were fortunate to hook up to striped marlin in the 120 to 180-pound class.

Jeff Leitzinger fishing aboard "Felina" on a recent trip got a first hand look at how the food chain works. Jeff hooked a 160-pound striped marlin that unfortunately died. Back at the dock they discovered a complete baby sailfish, around 5 pounds, in it's stomach, which in turn had a small mackerel inside it.

January 10 turned out to be one of the better days of fishing at Cabo San Lucas last week. Bernie Litman from Essex, England, released seven striped marlin, (as well as losing a deckhand momentarily overboard) aboard "Kathy Too", four miles off of Cerro Blanco.

The Cabo San Lucas fishing cruiser "Ruthless" did well too with five releases this day just three miles off of Moro Prieto, for the Andersons from Wisconsin.

"Ruthless" scored another five marlin the following day this time for David Geis Sr. and Jr. from Barrington, Ill., and Tucker, Calif., respectively.

The Zebco team from Oklahoma were here testing their new saltwater line of reels at Cabo San Lucas and ending up getting a surefire workout for their products on January 12th aboard "Ni Modo" when they released six stripers in one day.

Early in the week the best fishing at Cabo San Lucas started out at Golden Gate on the Pacific and the moved to the area off of the Old Lighthouse up to Chileno on the Cortez side.

Not a great deal was happening on smaller game fishing, with just 20 percent of Cabo San Lucas charters catching dorado (mahi-mahi) and even fewer, 11 percent landing yellowfin tuna.

Cabo San Lucas dorado catches were incidental, taking lures intended for marlin. Catches were usually of a single fish and weights were from 15 to 25 pounds.

Cabo San Lucas yellowfin tuna fishing was on a par with those of dorado, though we did have a few boats that caught three, and one with five tuna, but again, these were mostly incidental catches.

We did hear of some long range boats, cleaning out huge tuna, fish over 300 pounds.

It was quite surprising to see several sharks caught this week, most on soaked baits on the Pacific side. We had two average size Mako's released and "Josephine" landed a 300-pound thresher shark, which put up a fight tougher than a big blue according to the angler Russell Gallaway from Sacramento. The fish was over 10 feet long and took a live bait intended for a tuna.

Inshore fishing at Cabo San Lucas had some nice red snapper catches, the odd sierra and skipjack.

Cabo San Lucas had several overcast days; usually days started out sunny then clouded over by afternoon. Cabo San Lucas seas were great on non-windy days, but once the wind picked up we had "popcorn" seas.

FISHING LOCATION: Golden Gate, Old Lighthouse, Chileno.

BEST FISHING LURES: Live bait.