CABO SAN LUCAS WINTER STRIPED MARLIN FISHING
IS CONCENTRATED AT THE GOLDEN GATE BANK

Jan. 23-29, 2006, George Landrum, Fly Hooker Sportfishing, Cabo San Lucas fishing, Baja California Sur, Mexico:

Cabo San Lucas had great fishing weather through Wednesday with temperatures in the low 80s. Early Thursday morning the wind started to blow. Around 5 a.m. the rain started. It just drizzled all the way through Saturday morning.

Cabo San Lucas still has cold green fishing water on the Cortez side of the Cape with the water from Gorda Bank and to the south at 67-68 degrees. South of us and out to 30 miles on the Pacific side it warms to 73 degrees and is still pretty blue.

Not many Cabo San Lucas charter fishing boats fished the Cortez side offshore due to the cold green water but out to 15 miles offshore the conditions were pretty good.

Fishing for striped marlin had its effort concentrated at the Golden Gate Bank this week, with up to 60 Cabo San Lucas sportfishing boats working the drift on Tuesday and Wednesday.

But as the week wore on the bite dropped off. On Saturday there were only about 40 boats working the drift and few of them were able to get bit. At the end of the week it appeared that there was about a 30 percent success ratio for Cabo San Lucas boats targeting the Striped Marlin.

There was a brief two day flurry of decent yellowfin tuna in the 50-90 pound class on Thursday and Friday 28 miles to the southwest. They were associated with several different porpoise pods in the area. Only about 6 boats got into the action as the fish were moving about quite rapidly. A few nice fish to 200 pounds were caught on the southern edge of the San Jaime Bank.

There were a few wahoo to 50 pounds found just off the beach on the Pacific side this week, but once again there were no large numbers of heavy concentration of them.

Once again there were few Dorado flags to be seen at Cabo San Lucas and the cooling water may be a good part of the reason. While there were few Dorado caught, the ones that were boated were nice fish to 50 pounds, and they were found by watching the Frigate birds, running to the birds when they dove and slow trolling a live Mackerel through the area.

The Sierra and Pargo bite was on inshore this week and the Pangas were having a great time with Sierra to 10 pounds and Pargo to 30 pounds just off the beach. The best action was seen from the lighthouse on the Pacific side and to the north of there.

There was a mix of Mackerel and Caballito available this week at the normal $2 per bait.