PLENTY OF STRIPED MARLIN MIXED
TOGETHER WITH MIGRATING WHALES OFF CABO

Feb. 11-17, 2005, Tracy Ehrenberg, Pisces Fleet, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

We are thankful for the continuing striped marlin bite, which gave Cabo San Lucas anglers a very decent 75 percent catch rate for marlin. Cabo had heavy rain last Friday (Feb. 11th), but even then, the charter fishing boats that stuck it out met with success.

At the end of this fishing report, Cabo San Lucas fleet boats reporting seeing lots of striped marlin; they would be hooked up on one or two fish and see three or four more behind the boat. However not all of them were hungry, as the marlin are feeding on small squid and tiny sardines.

One of our top anglers this week was our newly elected Governor, Narcisso Agundez, who along with friends caught five striped marlin aboard "Ni Modo" on February 17th. One fish unfortunately, came up dead after an hour and a half battle, the other four were successfully released.

Not to be outdone, "Valerie" also released five striped marlin this same day for John Boyvich from IL, fishing with buddies 20 miles off of Cabo Real.

At the start of the week "Valerie" scored four stripers all released for Ralph Gretzinger and Justin Handler from Texas.

Cabo marlin fishing was spread out from Cabo Falso up as far as San Jose, with best fishing off of Cabo Real during the last couple of days of this report.

Nearly all the fish are going for bait, over lures and the average weight is 130 pounds. Practically everybody got a whale watching tour whilst they fished. One boat counted 42 whales in one day while they were out. Pisces anglers caught a total of 109 striped marlin this week of which 106 were released. Our overall catch success for all species combined was 82 percent.

Not a great deal going on with fishing for smaller game though 16 percent of boats did catch dorado (mahi-mahi) in the 15 to 25 pound class. These catches were fish taken whilst trolling and were usually just one or two fish. Inshore some of the pangas did well, finding debris after the rain, picking up as many as ten.

Tuna catches were slow with just a few small fish taken. However, as we close this report we hear that they were seen today at San Jaime on the Pacific, so perhaps we'll have some catches in the upcoming days. Sierra and a few skipjack were caught inshore. The best fishing location was from the Old Lighthouse to San Jose.

Cabo San Lucas weather had heavy rain on Friday, followed by clear sunny skies the rest of the week, seas are calm.

The average water temperature was 70 degrees.