MARLIN ARE NOW SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE EAST CAPE SPORTFISHING AREA

April 17, 2005, Bill Burkett, Fat Cat, Los Barriles, East Cape fishing report, Mexico:

The sportfishing season here on the East Cape is off to a great start. The large concentration of marlin that were herding bait schools near La Ribera and Punta Colorada last week, have now spread out throughout the East Cape sportfishing area. Added to the marlin are tuna under porpoise about 25-30 miles out and more dorado starting to show in the fish counts. East Cape fishing area water temperatures are creeping up and are averaging 70 to 73 degrees.

On Sunday and Monday, the north wind blew at 20 knots to remind us at East Cape that winter weather isn't that far behind us. On Tuesday the wind slowed and by Wednesday conditions were flat calm and have stayed that way.

Fat Cat made her first East Cape fishing trip of the week on Tuesday. I was joined by a friend from L. A., Rod Kubly and his son Matt. Matt, who's about 10, wanted to catch his first marlin. We fished to the north, 2-8 miles off Punta Pescadero, along with what appeared to be the rest of the area's fishing fleet.

The marlin were there and we watched several other East Cape charter fishing boats fight fish, but had no action all morning on Fat Cat. Our problem was that we had no bait. Due to the rough conditions, the bait fishermen were not able to catch much and only the earliest boats were able to buy bait. But we were finally rewarded in the early afternoon with a marlin jig strike. Matt went to work on his first marlin and had the fish to the boat in short order. Unfortunately for Matt, it didn't stay near the boat for long. Between the choppy seas and the effort of fighting the fish, Matt got too green around the gills to continue and had to pass the rod off to his dad. Rod fought the fish for nearly an hour before getting it near the boat and handing it back to Matt. The marlin, which only jumped once during the fight, was hooked in the gills, unusual for a jig fish, and could not be released.

On Wednesday Matt decided to stay home and only Rod and I fished. The weather was beautiful and we traveled north about 30 miles to the "Ocho Ocho" hoping to locate porpoise and tuna. Nothing was happening there and we moved to the south about 10 miles and found a large school of porpoise. Trolling cedar plugs and tuna feathers we were never able to get the tuna to bite. They were showing about a hundred feet down. But did have a marlin come into the spread and try to eat all the lures before leaving. That prompted us to switch to larger lures and we continued to troll with the porpoise. We missed another marlin before hooking and landing a nice bull dorado of about 25 pounds. Later we caught and released a striper as well.

On Thursday, Matt was back with us and we planned to return to the area we'd fished the day before. Sadly, we never got there. During the night thieves had boarded Fat Cat and, using bolt cutters, had cut the lock off the rod compartment and stolen all my fishing rods. So, instead of spending the rest of the week enjoying the great fishing and weather offshore, I had to spend my time filling out police reports. Not a happy way to end a fishing report!