FISHING REPORT FOR EL CARDONAL'S HIDEAWAY AT EAST CAPE

May 21, 2005, Bill Erhardt, El Cardonal, East Cape, Baja California Sur, Mexico Fishing Trip Report:

With fishing action slow in Loreto, between yellowtail season and the arrival of dorado and billfish, I hooked up my boat, drove to El Cardonal and fished six days on the East Cape, May 9-15, 2005. I stayed at the Hideaway at El Cardonal.

There is neither a launch ramp nor gasoline in El Cardonal so fishing there includes launching over the beach, setting a mooring, carrying gasoline from the shore to the boat in a kayak, and trips into Los Barriles every three or four days to refill a 55 gallon drum and whatever small containers are available. El Cardonal is only 14 miles north of Los Barriles, but the road is not paved. A one way trip with either a boat in tow or a load of gasoline takes well over an hour.

The first day fishing at East Cape, I ran to "ocho-ocho", a high spot east of Isla Cerralvo, and began trolling marlin lures. There was no action on the high spot but a couple of hours later on a shark line about 10 miles east I hooked and landed a nice striped marlin around 130 pounds.

The next day I went back to fishing at the shark floats early and in short order lost a marlin feather to a wahoo. I switched to wahoo lures rigged with wire and hooked another that I lost at the boat. There were no more bites until on the way back to the hotel in the afternoon about 10 miles east of El Cardonal when a sizzling strike on a petrolero turned into a nice 52 pound wahoo.

I later caught a wahoo slightly smaller than the first off Punta Pescadero and another about 30 pounds on the shark line.

On a trip down to Cabo Pulmo where there had reportedly earlier been a red hot marlin bite I found nothing. I did manage to catch a dorado off Los Barriles on the way back to El Cardonal, a small hen that would not have been a keeper had it not been my first of the season. It sure tasted good.

The sea conditions in the East Cape sportfishing area were fairly flat while I was fishing at El Cardonal. One night, there were consistent offshore winds of 10 knots or so and there was a 3-4 foot chop the next morning that made the shark floats hard to spot. That morning, as with the other days I was there, however, the wind swung around from various points of the compass and kept things knocked down pretty well. I didn't get wet from sea spray the entire time I was there.

The water temperature at East Cape remained between 76 and 78 degrees pretty much the entire week wherever I was between Isla Cerralvo and Cabo Pulmo.

One day I ran east 50 nautical miles looking for a water temperature break and activity that might accompany it. At 42 miles offshore there was a break and the temperature rose in a mile or two to 81 degrees. The water also turned blue and I spotted a nice marlin soon after the water warmed. He went down when I tried to interest him in some feathers, however, and I continued to troll for about two hours in the warmer water with no luck.