SQUID CONCENTRATIONS SUSPECTED IN
CABO SAN LUCAS FISH COUNT LULL

April 7-21, 2005, Tracy Ehrenberg, Pisces Fleet, Cabo San Lucas, Baja Sur, Mexico:

Fishing at Cabo San Lucas picked up strongly in the latter part of this report. The first week of this period gave us generally poor fishing in the Cabo San Lucas vacation area, with April 9th to 12th, being the slowest days, when many boats got "skunked", or lots of large squid as compensation. It's hard to say exactly why this is, but a combination of factors are believed to cause this, such as lower water temperatures, lots of squid in the area and change of season. In other words we are not surprised when fishing turns this way in March and April.

Despite this, we did have Cabo San Lucas fishing boats that did very well, even during these slower days.

"Ni Modo", really produced the goods for Mark Sells from Columbus, Ohio on April 12th, with one striped marlin released, nine yellowfin tuna, one dorado and five squid. Captain Jobe, did his research the night before and saw a warm current on satellite images, 24 miles off of the Old Lighthouse, which is where he found fish.

A few days later on the 15th, "Adriana" had a nice catch of three Cabo San Lucas striped marlin released, for Cameron and Christian Mattocks from Minnesota, while fishing off of Shipwreck Beach.

After this, fishing was on the up and up with several Pisces Fleet Cabo San Lucas charter fishing boats getting three, four and occasionally five striped marlin in a day, with most of these catches off of San Jose del CAbo. The 16th was a particularly good day, with our fleet releasing twenty-two stripers this day.

Fishing in the Cabo San Lucas area has continued in the same vein and boats are still getting one to four marlin, as well as the odd tuna or dorado.

Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was 76 percent with 52 percent of vessels catching marlin, though I should point out that in the last few days of this report, 98 percent of boats were catching marlin. Pisces anglers caught a total of 135 striped marlin this week while fishing off Cabo San Lucas, of which 129 were released, along with a solitary sailfish.

Large squid were the most abundant catch on smaller game at Cabo San Lucas, with fishing boats catching one to twenty of these unusual creatures in the 12 to 40 lb range.

Yellowfin tuna fishing was slow, with just 11 percent of Pisces boats finding fish of football size, catches were usually of one to three fish and sometimes up to as many nine.

Dorado fishing at Cabo San Lucas was on a par with the tuna, but when found it was usually just a single fish, in the 15 to 20 range.

We had a couple small mako sharks, both around the 60 lb mark. Inshore panga fishing was on the slow side, with some sierra, skipjacks, jack crevalles and very few roosterfish.

The best fishing location was mostly on the Cortez side from Chileno to Frailes. A couple of days we had some luck off of the Old Lighthouse on the Pacific.

Cabo San Lucas weather conditions had clear, sunny skies, with seas mostly calm, and wind picking up in the afternoon, causing some choppier seas.

The average fishing water temperature at Cabo San Lucas was 69-70 degrees, and the best lure was live bait.