Cabo San lUcas Fish Report for Jan 27-Feb 3, 2003 Capt George Landrum Fly Hooker Sportfishing [email protected] www.flyhooker.com CABO SAN LUCAS FISH REPORT FOR JANUARY 27-FEBRUARY 2, 2003 WEATHER: Most of this past week was partly to mostly cloudy. The exceptions were the first and last day! A lot of people found out that you can still get sunburned in an overcast. Our nighttime lows were in the low 60’s and the daytime highs were in the high 80’s on our sunny days and the mid 80’s on the overcast days. With all the overcast we still had no rain, but that is normal here in Cabo this time of year. (Part Two) WATER: The Pacific side had some swells this week, but they were spaced far apart and there was little if any wind, so there was no chop, just light wind riffles for most of the time. The Cortez side of the Cape was almost like glass this week. Most of the water around the Cape has been in the low 70’s but about 35 miles to the southeast there has been warm spot. Earlier in the week there was a band of warm water around 15 miles offshore on the Cortez side but that has been pushed up to the northeast by cooler Pacific water. (Available Space) BAIT: Mostly Mackerel this week but there are a few Caballito showing up in the bait tanks. The normal $2 per bait. A few bait boats up in the Chileno bay area have been selling Sardinas at $20 a scoop. (Side One Suite) FISHING: BILLFISH: There have been Marlin everywhere this week and in no particular concentrations. Both he Pacific side and the Cortez side were delivering at least one or two shots a day and most boats were coming in flying multiple Marlin flags. Live bait, either slow trolled or dropped deep. have been steady producers, and when tossed at fish sighted on the surface have gotten good responses as well. Lures have also worked well, but not quite as well as the live bait. The old reliables such as Mean Joe Green, Purple/Black and Petrolero have been the top colors for the lures. Most of the fish have been averaging #100 with a few over the #150 mark. (Perforated Sleep) YELLOWFIN TUNA: I saw a lot of nice fish brought in this week. There were a lot of Yellowfin over #100 and a few that broke the #200 mark. While you always remember the large fish, most of the Yellowfin caught were smaller football and school fish. The footballs averaged 10-20 pounds and made up the preponderance of the fleets catch but there were a lot of boats getting into the school fish of 35-60 pounds. All the fish were found mixed in with Porpoise and they were scattered, with no steady, reliable locations except for the current line 15 miles to the south. The best lures in order of production were deep running plugs such as Marauders and Bonitos, cedar plugs and feathers. A few of the larger fish were caught on live bait. (Strange) DORADO: Most of the boats were able to find a fish or two this week, but the concentrations just were not there for large numbers of fish. Most of the Dorado that were caught were found mixed in with the Tuna and the averaged #20-#25. Several boats did find floating debris and loaded up on nice fish in the #30 class, but for everyone else, they were lucky to get one or two fish a day. As with the Tuna, the Dorado were scattered around with no specific areas producing better than others. (Little Shoes) WAHOO: There were a few nice fish in the #50 class brought in this week but except for the report of one private boat catching an even dozen Wahoo off of a piece of debris (no idea where, and this is an unconfirmed report) there was no steady bite. The Wahoo that I know of were caught at the Banks while the boats were working for Tuna. There were other strikes but they bit through the mono leader used on the Tuna lures. (Jib’s Hat) INSHORE: A few Roosterfish as well as a scattering of Sierra, Snapper and Grouper made up the inshore catch this week. No large amounts of any of these fish were found, and with the number of Tuna just offshore and Marlin in close, combined with the great water conditions, many of the Pangas that would normally be fishing the beach were found up to 15 miles out. (Agile N.) NOTES: The fishing has been great this past week and we are also finding Whales, Porpoise and Turtles on every trip. The only thing that has been making me sad is seeing all the Marlin brought in to be hung for pictures. There is no need to kill the fish, no one needs the skin for a mount anymore, it’s all fiberglass nowadays. If you want a picture, get one of the fish beside the boat! A lot of the crews tell the clients that they need the fish to feed the family. Maybe if you tell them that if they kill a Marlin then they can consider that their tip, they might change their mind, then again, maybe not.....This weeks report was written to the sound of Leo Kottke on his 1981 Chrysalis release “Guitar Music”. "Fly Hooker" Daily Catch Reports for Jan 27-Feb 2, 2003 “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 27 JANUARY 2003 Today’s anglers on the “Fly Hooker” were Vern Yarbourgh and his new friends Max and Karen .......... . Vern fished with us last year and had only one day on board the boat as we had the port engine take a nosedive the next day. This year things were much better! Vern did not have much interest in catching Marlin, he wanted Tuna or Dorado and both Max and Karen had fished here one time before and had gotten skunked so they were going to be happy with anything. Juan and Manuel decided to head out to the San Jaime area and look for Tuna. Once they got in the area they spotted a number of boats working a large pod and headed over there. No one was catching any fish at the time but Vern told Max to watch the lines, as there were sometimes Tuna in with the Porpoise! As they were watching the lines, a huge boil erupted on the long rigger and the petrelero Hi-5 swimming head disappeared in a hole! Max was up and it took him almost an hour to get the fish to the boat. Vern is left handed and it was awkward to reel and pump on the fish, but he got it done. Later on Vern told him that he did not expect a fish that big to hit and that he would probably be famous back at the dock! When it was taped out it measured 64 inches from fork to nose and had a 44 3/4 girth. Using the formula that worked out at 160 pounds, +/- 10%. At the scales it weighed 170 pounds! Way to go Max! We had some beautiful Tuna steaks and sashimi and Max had a lot of the meat smoked. That was the first fish of the day and the longest fight. Vern caught a Dorado and a Striped Marlin, Max and Karen shared the honors of another Marlin and lost a Dorado. Both Marlin were tagged and released and put on great acrobatic exhibitions. Another Marlin was hooked up but came off. What a great day, the water was nice, the sun was out and the fishing was outstanding! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 30 JANUARY, 2003 Joe and Laurie Pucci and their friend Hank and Dolly were our anglers today and Joe was the one who got the workout, but Hank was the one who caught the fish! Manuel and Efrain (Juan’s day off) headed out to the Pacific side to look for fish and found a Pod of Porpoise that they began to work. I am not sure of the exact sequence of events but sometime a cedar plug in the short position got inhaled and Joe was the angler. It was not until two and a half hours later that the leader finally chaffed through but they had the fish to the boat three times during the fight, they just could not get it quite close enough to gaff. Both Manuel and Efrain said the fish was well over #200! Joe thought it was great and really enjoyed the fight and said that he would not have known what to do with all that meat if he had brought the fish in! Hank got a smaller football size fish that provided them all with dinner! Great fishing day!