ROUGH SEAS KEEP FISHING BOATS OFF THE WATER FOR 3 DAYS THIS WEEK

Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2005, George Landrum, Fly Hooker Sportfishing, Cabo San Lucas sportfishing, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

Cabo San Lucas weather started off with little wind but ended up with highs in the mid 90s, heavy wind and high humidity. Hurricane Otis passed to the west of Cabo San Lucas. The Port Captain closed the port on Friday and it has been closed for Saturday and Sunday as well. Hopefully he will reopen it on Monday.

Cabo San Lucas fishing area water has been unfished for the past three days. Prior to the weather turning bad, the water temperatures on the Sea of Cortez were right around the 86-87 degree mark, while on the Pacific side the warm water had pushed up past the Golden Gate Bank with temperatures in the 86 range. Right now we have swells at 8-10 feet and winds from 20-30 m.p.h.

Bait was readily available at the beginning of the week, who knows what it will be like if they reopen the port tomorrow.

The hot spot for the final day of fishing this week at Cabo San Lucas was on the Pacific side, up on the inside of the Golden Gate Bank and beyond. The water temperature was right and there were Striped Marlin all over the place. There was a Blue Marlin caught reported to be in the 400# category as well, and there were scattered fish elsewhere.

I got lucky last week and while fishing on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas on the south end of the San Jaime I found a pod of Pacific Spotted Dolphin that had a nice school of Tuna associated with it. There were more birds with these fish than I have seen in a long time and we were the only boat there. We ended up with 7 fish between #40 and #90. Other than that, there were almost no Tuna reported at Cabo San Lucas except for some footballs close to shore on the Cortez side.

Dorado were probably the fish of the week. Of course most of them were small fish, but there were some nice ones scattered around. Most of the action came from 25-28 miles to the south of Cabo San Lucas where there was a small color change and plenty of bait. This area is also well known for converging currents so there is often floating debris to be found. Wonder what it will be like this time next week as the debris washed out from the arroyos via the hurricane rains start to form and hold fish?

The Cabo San Lucas inshore fishery for the Striped Marlin also had quite a few Wahoo as many boats reported loosing up to three Marlin jigs due to Wahoo teeth on mono leader. Since the activity was primarily aimed at Marlin, few Wahoo were actually landed, but those that did hit the decks were nice fish in the 40-50 pound class.

Most Cabo San Lucas Pangas were again fishing slightly offshore for pelagics at the beginning of the week, and of course the inshore shut down with the hurricane. It may take a week or so before it gets any good again as all the storm swells make getting close to the beach tricky and the runoff from the arroyos makes things a bit murky.