SCRATCH FISHING DURING A THREE-DAY TRIP
OUT OF EAST CAPE'S HOTEL PLAYA DEL SOL

Oct. 15, 2004, Gary Furness, East Cape fishing trip, Baja Sur, Mexico:

Playa Del Sol Oct 9-13, 2004. Perfect weather, light breeze, moderate temperature, and just plain beautiful 24 hrs/day. Playa has improved its rooms, with all new glass (tinted) doors, and many rooms with refrigerators. Now compared with Palmas de Cortez, still the plain Jane, but nice. East Cape fishing on Alma Rosa III with Justin and Jasmine, engaged couple on their inaugural trip.

Oct 10: heading out after getting bait, come up on a striper on surface, and great hookup. Justin and Jasmine share the fish for nearly an hour and release. Then out to porpoise and tuna. Nearly 3 hours of looking at porpoise, and tuna not eating a variety of lures and different sized live bait, resulting in a single football. Then a few hours of trolling home with no bites.

Oct 11: baited a single 20 lb bull dorado for a nice early start. Out to porpoise where bite was a bit better, with 3 25-30 lb, all on sardines. Trolled a real nice striper into the lures in afternoon that Bocha estimated to be 80-85kg. Great fight and release on 20 lb tackle.

Oct 12: we try for a home run, heading way out and south away from other East Cape fishing boats. After about a 90 minute run we start to bait a total of 8 single and one pair of sailfish with live bait...nada. Same with one striper. No lure action...humbling and frustrating, but a lot of visual activity. A couple of East Cape boats went the other way and hit the tuna big time at the 88.

Overall East Cape fishing was a scratch affair. Every day a couple of boats had lots of flags, a few where skunked, and most had 1-3 flags.

Next year will be better fishing, but cannot beat how pretty it was.

East Cape water temperature appeared to be 82-85, very warm (one of the reasons for lack of bites according to Bocha...along with too much squid.