EAST CAPE ANGLERS' "MOTHER'S DAY" FISHING TOURNAMENT REPORT

May 7, 2005, Bill Burkett, Fat Cat, Los Barriles, East Cape, Baja, Mexico Fishing Tournament Report:

FAT CAT made three East Cape fishing trips offshore during the reporting period.

The first trip was on Tuesday, May 3rd. I was accompanied by my friend Jose "Pepe" Verduzco, who is captain of RUDE GIRL from hotel Palmas de Cortez. Although Pepe hadn't fished the day before, he had numbers for a spot about 12 miles off Cabo Pulmo where the fleet had found good numbers of marlin, sailfish and dorado on Monday. Unfortunately, the fish weren't active on Tuesday and none of the East Cape boats fishing the area were having any luck. We started trolling north and finally found good numbers of marlin about 6 to 8 miles northeast of Punta Colorada. After baiting a couple of tailers with no takers, we had a fish come into the lure pattern and strike at just about every lure, but refuse to switch to the live bait. That fish finally left. Just before accepting defeat, we found another tailer and cast a bait to it. The fish ate and Pepe landed the fattest striper I'd seen in a long time, a 176 pounder. We kept the fish to feed the kids at the boarding school in San Antonio where two of Pepe's kids attend. The marlin was plugged with squid, which probably explains why they weren't interested in our baits.

On Thursday I returned to the same East Cape fishing area. This time accompanied by Pepe's son, Diego, and Diego's cousin Andres. We again found lots of marlin in the area and clean blue 75 degree water, but no fish interested in eating. We returned home skunked.

On Friday my wife Silvia and I fished in the East Cape Angler's "Mother's Day" Tournament. This is a club members tournament and is a lady anglers only event. Although I was tempted to try an area further south based on the Terrafin map, I reminded myself that "you should never leave fish to find fish" and returned to the same area off Punta Colorada, hoping that the marlin would be hungry this time. As it turned out, it was the right decision. Silvia released 3 marlin from six hookups and won the event!

Out of about 23 East Cape boats fishing the tournament, there were 7 marlin, 4 sailfish and 2 dorado caught. Donna Sale, on ANDELE won second place with two sails and a marlin. And Angelica Lucero fishing with Bob Hardisty on Makaira was third with two marlin.