Cabo Bite Report for Oct 27, Nov 3, 2003 Capt. George Landrum "Fly Hooker" Sportfishing [email protected] www.flyhooker.com CABO FISH REPORT FOR OCTOBER 27 TO NOVEMBER 2, 2003 WEATHER: Great weather here in Cabo as Fall settles in. Our evening lows are in the high 60’s and the day has highs in the mid 80’s to low 90’s. Mostly sunny all week with only a few days of slight overcast. No rain of course! The winds have been mostly light with an occasional pick up in strength in the early afternoon with wind from the northwest kicking up to maybe 12 knots. WATER: The temperature break we have been observing just to the outside of the San Jaime Banks is spreading the boundary out a bit more and moving in closer to land as it cools down across the board as well. The water on the Jaime now is mostly in the 82 degree range while water closer in is 85. On the Sea of Cortez side the same thing is happening with the warmer water closer to land and everything cooling off a bit as well. That is good for the fishing as those high temperature we had been seeing were not carrying a lot of fish with them. Surface conditions have been excellent as well, with just a slight chop and swell on the Pacific in the morning and kicking up to quite a few whitecaps later on in the day. on the Cortez side the conditions have been just beautiful with blue, calm water! BAIT: Almost all the bait this week was Caballito, and if you were late leaving the Marina you might have had a hard time getting it. The price remains unchanged at the usual $2 per bait. The Sardinas were very scarce again but a few bait boats had some early in the week, they sold out quickly at $20 per scoop. FISHING: BILLFISH: The action this week almost all seemed to be located on the Pacific side of the Cape with the concentration of Striped Marlin between the Lighthouse and Golden Gate Banks. Blue action was happening a lot closer to home with many boat getting strikes from nice sized fish as close as two miles from the Cape and as far out as the Jaime Banks. There were boats flying as many as three blue flags this week and I heard of a couple that released 6 or seven fish in one day. The Blues have been averaging between #250 and #300 and have been striking on lures in the Dorado color as well as Petrelero. The Striped Marlin have been a mix of bait and lure fish with the average weight at #110 and an occasional #160 to #180 being hooked. Boy, at that size they almost look like small Blue Marlin when they open their mouth behind a lure! YELLOWFIN TUNA: For those of you checking out my report in the hope of finding a secret that will assist you in winning the up coming Tuna Tournament, good luck! My boat is fishing as well and we want to win! Anyway, its great fun and the fish move around a lot, lets just hope that by this time next week there will have been some big ones weighed. From the way things are going so far, it does not look like we will be seeing as many large fish (over #100) coming to the scales as we had last year. We are seeing some fish that size in the Porpoise pods, mixed in with smaller school fish, but they have not been biting all that well. The area around the 1150 spot and the area just to the south side of the Jaime Banks were holding fish this week, but who knows if they will still be there next week. The larger fish this week were taken on live bait slow trolled along the leading edge of the Porpoise pods, using feathers and cedar plugs resulted in smaller fish, at least for most boats. Lets keep our fingers crossed that the secret weapons we bring (and we all have some!) work on the winning fish this year! Good luck! DORADO: The key to getting Dorado this week was finding floating debris. There was enough of it out there last week that you really had to work hard to find something that was holding fish, but this week there was not as much around and most of it had at least one fish associated. The best results on Dorado were had up around and past the Golden Gate Banks and some boats were able to really limit out with fish to #40. Closer to home, slow trolling live bait arround 1/2 to 1 mile off the beach on the Pacific side resulted in a few fish that averaged 15 pounds. Live bait was the key to Dorado this week. WAHOO: To use a favorite expression of mine, “What Hoo?”. There were very few caught this week and they were incidental catches of fish averaging #35. INSHORE: There was really not a lot happening inshore this week with the exception of the Dorado on live bait. I talked with a lot of people who had gone out on Pangas and who had gotten no fish, and talked to a few Captains who said that they were still catching the occasional Roosterfish and Jack Crevalle, but that yes, the inshore was slow. NOTES: This coming week is going to be a barn burner with the Tuna Tournament having over 200 teams entered. Pre fishing is on Wednesday and the Tournament is on Thursday and Friday. I think that every Charter boat I know is booked for the game and most of them have been for a few months. I know that we have a waiting list of people who want to know if someone drops out and a boat opens up. There are a few boats available, but they are the ones who are trying to make a killing. One owner of a #1 and @8 foot boat was asked by a friend of mine if he was available for the tournament. The guys said yes and when my friend asked him how much he wanted per day, the owner told him “$1,000”! Guess he won’t be fishing the tournament. Anyway, I am going to be very busy this week and will try to give a good report on the fishing action in next weeks report. Until then, Tight Lines (and keep your fingers crossed for me, huh?)! Fly Hooker Daily Catch Reports for Oct 27-Nov 3, 2003 Capt. George Landrum "Fly Hooker" Sportfishing [email protected] www.flyhooker.com WEEKLY FISH COUNT STRIPED MARLIN: ONE TAGGED AND RELEASED (#120) YELLOWFIN TUNA: NINE FISH KEPT (1@#65, 2@#50, 4@#45, 2@#25) DORADO: ONE FISH KEPT (#12) “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR OCTOBER 26, 2003 I had a chance to fish with Bob Deeter today, his second of three days on the “Fly Hooker”. Some people say it is bad luck for the owner of a charter boat to be on board with clients and maybe they are right. We ended up the day with no flags on the outriggers. Juan and his brother Juan started us out fishing just outside the lighthouse on the Pacific side and a little while later, maybe a half hour, we spotted a Marlin on the surface. We ran up to it and as we approached the fish, it went down. A bait was cast anyway and left to soak for a while with no action happening. The same thing happened a short time later as we worked our way up the Pacific coast, looking for Dorado and Tuna. About mid morning a Striped Marlin came in on the long rigger, hot on the lure. As normal, Juan gunned the boat to keep the fish off of the lure as a live bait was dropped back. I think the fish was so focused on the lure that it never even saw the bait, and the fish left when the lure lost it’s action. We kept hunting and worked a fishy looking area off of the Los Arcos for quite a while before starting back. At 1:40, just outside the Pedregal, where we had seen Marlin this morning, we had a strike on the bridge rod. Bob was watching the lures and he saw the fish come up on the lure. At first he thought it was a Striped Marlin but then realized how large the bill was and yelled “big fish on the stinger!”. We all looked and sure enough, there she was! The fish bit and Juan set the hook and passed the rod down. As Bob took the rod into the chair the fish began a great series of jumps, both vertical and grey-hounding ones. The fish would jump towards the boat and Juan would gun the engines, then the fish would jump away. Bob worked on the fish for about 5 minutes when all of a sudden the rod tip came up abruptly and the fish was gone. The hook had pulled out! Oh well, it was a nice way to end the day, hooked up to a Blue Marlin that we all estimated at between #250 and #300. Maybe tomorrow without me on board they will do better and get Bob into some meat fish. “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 27 OCTOBER, 2003 Juan and Manuel took Bob Deeter to the same place off of the Pedregal/lighthouse area that we had lost the Blue Marlin at on yesterdays trip and started there. The plan was to work as far to the south-east as needed to find some Tuna. The lures had been set out no longer than 5 minutes when a large Marlin that everyone estimated at between #400 and #500 came up on the bridge rod and struck. From the look of the leader, it was a large fish. No hook-up happened, just a bill swipe and they brought the lure in to check it out. The #300 leader was chafed almost 3/4 of the way through, just on the strike! As they were looking at the leader, the short rigger went down on a hard strike. The hook was set and the fight was on for a whole three pumps when the hook pulled. The fish never jumped so there was no way to tell if it had been the same fish, but everyone agreed that it had been a large one. The trolling continued, searching for Dorado or Tuna. It was not until they got 27 miles out that the Porpoise were found, and there were Tuna jumping among them. After 10 minutes of working the fish with lures and no results, Juan changed to slow trolling live bait with no leader, the hook tied directly to the line. It worked and Bob fought two #50 Yellowfin to the boat and into the box! Finally some meat fish in the boat! Bob is taking tomorrow off but will go fishing again on Wednesday on another boat. We were already booked for that day but arranged a good boat for him to fish on. We hope he has a lot of luck and finishes filling that cooler with fillets! P.S.- Talked with Bob and Paula on the 31st, and they are going to try and get away again around Thanksgiving and come to Cabo again! He did get to fill the cooler! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR OCTOBER 29, 2003 Ron and Jo Flora are fishing with us for the next three days. Ron is 72 years young and he really wants to get a chance to tie in to a Yellowfin Tuna of over 100 pounds. Now you know he is not a novice at the sport, he brought new reels and rods with him in order to be sure the equipment he used was up to the task. Jo is a wonderful wife and they get along great, she loves to fish as much as Ron does. Ron used to run marathons, and was an Olympic runner in the 60’s. His knees are shot now and he says that had he known what was going to happen to them, he would have taken us swimming instead! Anyway, Juan and Manuel took them out this morning and put the lines in the water about 5 miles out from the Lighthouse on the Pacific side and things were real slow until they got out 27 miles. Then they had a strike! The first fish was a Marlin and Jo fought it for just a few seconds before it came off, then another fish struck a purple/black straight runner on the long rigger. That was about 11:30, and Ron settled in for the fight. It took almost an hour, and it was on his gear. After the fish finally was in the boat, Ron swore it had to be #80, but Juan said that it was more in the #60-#65 range. Not a problem at the time, as Ron was pretty wore out on the fish. Now the reason he wants a big Cow Tuna is that it had always been his fathers dream to get a chance at a big fish like that, but he never had the money or the time to give it a try. In his place, Ron wants to catch one for him! Nice, huh? All right, we will keep our fingers crossed that in the next two days it happens! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR OCTOBER 30, 2003 Juan and Manuel took Ron and Jo back to the same area that they had found the Tuna yesterday but there were no large fish for them today. Juan told me that they could see the bigger fish in the school but they just would not bite anything they tried. They did manage to hook up to two Yellowfin in the 25 pound class, but no big fish today. The wind picked up a little bit and they have decided that because of Ron’s knees they will probably try the Cortez side of the Cape tomorrow, the water should be a bit smoother over there, and there have been some fish reported from the area around the 1150. “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR OCTOBER 31, 2003 The water was nicer on the Cortez side of the Cape than on the Pacific side, but again, there were no really large fish. Right after they had started out, Manuel received a call from a friend that he had found a pod of porpoise and gave Manuel directions. They ran all the way out there and ended up about 17 miles out from Palmilla. There were Porpoise everywhere, and since they were one of the first boats to the spot, the action happened quickly. Four nice Yellowfin of about #45 were caught, then the other boats started showing up, putting the scare into the Tuna. Jo brought in a small Dorado of about 12 pounds that they caught on live bait tossed at a small piece of wood, and that was the end of the action for the day. The rest of the day was spent looking for a Marlin for Jo to fight, but they saw not one fin nor did they have a fish come up on the lures. They did have a good time however, and after returning to port we spent a couple of hours at Tanga-Tanga sipping Pacificos and talking about all kinds of stuff. Thanks Ron and Jo, we really enjoyed your company and are looking forward to seeing you when you get a chance to come down again, hopefully and catch the #100 Yellowfin! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 1, 2003 Russ Colby fished with us back on January 12th, and then he was on a Marlin search. We did not have any luck with the Billfish, but did get into the action on small football Yellowfin on light tackle (finally!) and lost a nice Dorado. Well, once again he is looking for a Marlin, but would not turn down a fish for the table as well! Juan and Manuel went out looking for Tuna for the table to start off with, but instead the almost blanked out on any fish at all, The only fish they did find was a Striped Marlin, and he struck on a lure! Finally Russ got his Marlin, a Striper estimated at #120 that they tagged and released. Congratulations Russ, nice to see that Blue flag flying with a release flag below it!