A LUCKY FISHING WEEK FOR THE EAST CAPE BOAT FAT CAT

July 9, 2005, Bill Burkett, Fat Cat, East Cape, Baja California Sur, Mexico Fishing:

After missing the previous week's fishing due to really bad wind and seas on the East Cape, my wife, Silvia, and I took the FAT CAT out fishing on Sunday July 3rd.

While putting out the last lure in the trolling pattern, Silvia spotted a pair of marlin just ahead of the boat and pulled the lures in front of them for an instant hookup! After a nice fight, we released the marlin to fight another day. With a start like THAT you'd think we'd have a busy day, but NO, we didn't see a single marlin the remainder of the day. We were fishing off Punta Pescadero from 2 to 8 miles out in clean blue 78 degree water that seemed devoid of life.

I fished solo on Tuesday the 5th. This time I fished an area about 7 miles NNE of East Cape's Punta Colorada. This spot has been very lucky for us this year and my purpose was to scout it for an East Cape Angler's Tournament the following day. My wife won an earlier club tournament fishing this area in May and I achieved my personal goal of catching a marlin solo here a couple of weeks back. On this East Cape fishing day I saw several marlin and had one strike, but came home skunked. Water temperatures in the area were a cool 74 degrees.

We did return to our lucky spot the next day for the tournament and it once again proved to be lucky for us. Less than 15 minutes after putting out the lures we hooked and released the first marlin of the tournament. That early fish was our only fish, but we won the tournament as no other boat caught more than one marlin either. It was very slow fishing for the 25 East Cape boats entered and unpleasant as well, in a strong SE wind and uncomfortable seas. Only 7 marlin were caught. Second place was won by BILL COLLECTOR and third was FIN-ADDICT. I was amazed to find that the water temperature in the area had risen three degrees from the day before, to 77.2.

Our last trip for this report period was on Saturday the 9th. Silvia and I fished an area known as the 10/10, as it's about ten miles from both La Ribera and Punta Pescadero. We saw many marlin and ended up releasing one nice fish from five strikes. Several other East Cape fishing boats in the area did well also. The water temperature was 80 to 82 degrees.