EAST CAPE FISHING OUT AND AROUND ISLA CERRALVO BY THE BOAT FAT CAT

May 22, 2005, Bill Burkett, Fat Cat, East Cape, Baja California Sur, Mexico Fishing:

We began our East Cape fishing week on Saturday, May 14th, fishing four days with guests from California. We targeted Roosterfish the first morning using ladyfish we caught as bait. Although we had good success catching the bait, we slow trolled them for several hours with no interest from the roosters. So, we moved offshore near Punta Pescadero and trolled for marlin and dorado. Our luck didn't improve any and after several hours we returned to the beach to see if the roosters were hungry yet. We immediately hooked a large roosterfish, but it came unbuttoned after a 10 minute fight. We got no other bites before calling it a day.

On Sunday we traveled way south near Vinorama with plans to target wahoo early near shore and then move offshore to fish for marlin. Our luck didn't improve any from the day before and we returned home "stinky" again.

Our luck improved on Monday while trolling in a warm water spot of 78 degrees about 12 miles south of the ocho-ocho, when we encountered a small group of spinner dolphin escorting tuna. As we trolled into the porpoise with marlin lures we got a double hookup on 20 pound yellowfin. Demonstrating my usual "brilliance" I switched the marlin lures for small tuna feathers and immediately hooked up a quad. However, these fish were 5-10 pounders. Small lures equals small fish. We ended with 8 tuna before leaving the fish to the other East Cape sportfishing boats that showed after I gave the Lat/Long to a friend over the radio. While trolling toward home we spotted a marlin feeding close to the boat and trolled near it. The fish came into the spread and whacked at a lure without hitting it and left.

The next day we went fishing north to Cerralvo island. We planned to troll near the drop-off around Roca Montana for wahoo and then run toward the north end of the island and look for dorado, as several nice fish had come from that area the previous day. I'm happy to report that the first part of the plan worked beautifully. We caught 3 nice wahoo of 30-40 pounds before moving away in search of dodos and marlin. The second part of the plan was less successful. We saw many free-jumping marlin in the area, but none were interested in our offerings. Although there are a great deal of marlin all around the East Cape right now, they are very reluctant to bite. The fish are stuffed with squid and aren't much interested in lures or live bait. We did manage to get a marlin hookup while trolling home, but the fish came off after a short fight.