VERY SLOW FISHING OFFSHORE AND SWARMS OF BEES INSHORE
FOUND BY THE EAST CAPE FISHING BOAT FAT CAT THIS WEEK

April 30, 2005, Bill Burkett, Los Barriles, East Cape, Baja fishing, Mexico:

After sitting on the beach watching the wind blow all weekend, Fat Cat ventured offshore on Tuesday April 26th. East Cape fishing had been very slow over the weekend for everybody, most likely due to the full moon. But, being eternally optimistic, we hoped to catch the first post moon bite.

Accompanied by friends Dave Stephens and Eric Premel, we fished from 25 to 40 miles southeast of Los Barriles, where Terrafin showed the warmest water at about 76 degrees. We found two large schools of porpoise, but got no bites after an hour or so of trolling in each school. There were several hotel charter boats fishing with us and their luck wasn't any better. While trolling back toward home we had one halfhearted strike on an outrigger line, but nothing else all day.

On Wednesday, I was again joined by Eric Premel for the days' fishing. This time the plan was to stay inshore and look for dorado and roosterfish. After slow trolling mackerel near Punta Pescadero for three hours with no results, we returned to Los Barriles and started looking for ladyfish to catch for roosterfish bait. We found a large school of the ladies near the mouth of the San Bartolo arroyo and cast small curly-tailed jigs for them. We not only caught ladyfish, but also a couple of nice pompano and a surprise dorado of about 4 pounds. The ladyfish did their job well and Eric caught two nice roosters of 35 and 45 pounds, his first ever, and lost three or four others. Both the roosters were released.

Meanwhile, the area we'd fished the day before came alive with feeding fish. All the returning boats were flying lots of brag flags. Guess we were too early!

On Thursday, my wife Silvia joined me to again target the roosterfish. Due to extremely calm conditions, the ladyfish were a little reluctant to bite, but we did manage to catch a couple. Both baits were eaten by roosters almost immediately after being put in the water, but both roosters escaped after short fights. Then, as we were attempting to catch some more ladyfish the boat was "attacked" by a swarm of bees. We ran offshore a ways and waited awhile, but the bees were still there when we returned, so we decided to head up to the buoys off Pescadero and troll the remainder of the day. Although the water was 75 degrees and clear blue, we found no signs of life in the area and returned home smelling "skunky."

On Friday the wind returned and is still blowing.