MARCH FISHING ACTION PROVES SURPRISINGLY GOOD FOR CABO BOATS

March 25-31, 2005, Tracy Ehrenberg, Pisces Fleet, Cabo San Lucas fishing, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

It was another surprisingly good fishing week at Cabo San Lucas, with a nice mix of striped marlin, dorado and tuna to keep anglers busy, as well as several wahoo.

Cabo San Lucas sportfishing vacation area water temperatures crept up to as high as 75 degrees in some places, giving credibility to the story we heard of a huge blue marlin that had spooled three different charter boats and that is still out there. This is not to say that every fishing day was great, we did have a couple of days when half the boats got "skunked", but we ended up with a respectable 87 percent overall catch success rate for all species combined.

Quite a few of our charter fishing boats had triple marlin days, such as "Valerie" on March 25th, 18 to 20 miles off of San Jose. March 28th was lucky for David Hope from Jamaica Plains, Ma. and Peter Willsher from Woodbridge, CT aboard "Andrea" they released three Cabo San Lucas striped marlin and also boated a wahoo and a dorado, 25 miles directly south of Cabo. "Yahoo" closed out the month with three stripers and a dorado too, for a group from Buffalo, NY. Other boats had one or two stripers, with most caught on the Cortez side. The size of the fish was good; with some as big as 190 lbs. Live bait was most effective. Thirty-two percent of boats caught marlin giving us a total of thirty-seven stripers of which 35 were released.

Yellowfin tuna fishing at Cabo San Lucas was a little better than marlin, percentage wise at thirty-five percent, but number wise much better. Some boats caught 20 or more of football size fish, giving us a tally of 240 tuna this week. Fishing for tuna was pretty consistent throughout the week with the better catches on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas.

Dorado fishing at Cabo San Lucas slowed a little this week, down to 23 percent of charters catching fish in the 20 to 40 lb class, with the best fishing location between Land's End and the Old Lighthouse.

"Ni Modo" caught a huge 380 lb hammerhead shark on March 29th, for Jerry Brand from Lafayette, Indiana.

Several wahoo were caught in the 40 to 65 lb class, all while fishing with lures.

Once again, lots of large squid, up to 50 lbs., inshore sierra and skipjacks.

Cabo San Lucas had fair seas, clear sunny skies. The best fishing was at San Jaime on the Pacific to San Jose on the Cortez. Cabo San Lucas sportfishing area water temperatures averaged 71 degrees.