FISHING FOR TUNA AND STRIPED MARLIN
STEADY FOR CABO SAN LUCAS FLEETS

Dec. 19-25, 2005, George Landrum, Fly Hooker Sportfishing, fishing at Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

Cabo San Lucas fishing area nighttime lows have been around the high 50s and daytime highs have been in the high 70s. The word for the week on the Pacific side was "Big Swells." As a result of storms moving across the northern Pacific, Cabo San Lucas had ground swells to 12 feet move in on the Pacific side. These ground swells have been spaced far enough apart that you rarely noticed quite how large they were. They had no effect on the offshore fishing. There was little wind on the Pacific side and as far as 40 miles out and surface conditions were great.

Cabo San Lucas water temperatures were 71-72 degrees almost everywhere with no temperature breaks worth noting. On the Cortez side of Cabo San Lucas we had choppy conditions up past Punta Gorda at the beginning of the week but conditions improved later. There was a mix of Mackerel and Caballito bait available this week at the normal $2 per bait.

Striped Marlin and Yellowfin Tuna are going to be the holiday fish as they are the closest things we have to a sure bet this week.

It is amazing but the striped marlin bite up at the Finger Bank is continuing. A friend just spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday fishing the area and released 15, 12 and 32 Striped Marlin.

Cabo San Lucas charter fishing boats working the Golden Gate Bank continued to get a fair number of fish while drifting live bait and some of these fish have moved south down the canyon edge and are biting lures on the north side of the San Jaime Bank.

There is still a fair bite on the Striped Marlin at the lighthouse, but it has been a last hour effort for a lot of boats on the way home as there is not a very large concentration of billfish there.

On average, Cabo San Lucas boats drifting bait at the banks are getting one to three fish a day.

There was little change in the yellowfin tuna report this week. Almost all the fish were found between 15 and 30 miles out, from due south to the west side of the San Jaime bank. While many of the fish were footballs, there were some schools with fish crashing the surface at 40-50 pounds and a few fish much larger were taken on live bait soaked at 100 feet around the schools. Almost all these fish were associated with Dolphin, and the better schools also had Frigate Bird piles on them.

While the Dorado bite continues to be poor at Cabo San Lucas, there are still some fish out there as I found out on Thursday with a pair of fish at 30 and 45 pounds. There was about one flag for every ten boats this week.

There were Wahoo caught this week at Cabo San Lucas, and the ones I heard of came from the 95 spot. They were nice fish at an average of 50 pounds and quite a few lures were lost in that area.

The big swells on the Pacific side of Cabo San Lucas have kept many of the Pangas from fishing close in but the ones that have done it are reporting a slow increase in the Sierra bite as well as a slow increase in the number of yellowtail showing up. With the calm conditions on the Pacific side I have seen Pangas as far as 25 miles off shore.