PISCES WEEKLY FISH REPORT JANUARY 7TH TO 13TH, 2005 BILLFISH: We had a pretty fantastic week here in Cabo, with lots of striped marlin; in fact Pisces anglers totaled one hundred and twenty-one for the past seven days. Fishing was great nearly every day with the few exceptions on windy, colder days when fish didn’t bite as well, or when anglers couldn’t take the seas, preferring to turn back. Seventy-five percent of charters were fortunate to hook up to striped marlin in the 120 to 180 lb class. Jeff Leitzinger fishing aboard “Felina” on a recent trip got a first hand look at how the food chain works. Jeff hooked a 160 lb striped marlin that unfortunately died; back at the dock they discovered a complete baby sailfish (around 5lbs), in it’s stomach, which in turn had a small mackerel inside it. January 10th turned out to be one of the better days – on this date Bernie Litman from Essex, England was thrilled to release seven striped marlin, (as well as losing a deckhand momentarily overboard) aboard “Kathy Too”, four miles off of Cerro Blanco. “Ruthless” did well too with five releases this day just three miles off of Moro Prieto, for the Andersons from Wi. “Ruthless” scored another five the following day this time for David Geis Sr. and Jr. from Barrington ILL and Tucker Ca. respectively. The Zebco team from Oklahoma were here testing their new saltwater line of reels and ending up getting a surefire work out for their products on January 12th aboard “Ni Modo” when they released six stripers in one day. Early in the week fishing started out at Golden Gate on the Pacific and the moved to the area off of the Old Lighthouse up to Chileno on the Cortez side. Of the marlin fought by Pisces anglers one hundred and eighteen were released. OTHER SPECIES: Not a great deal happening on smaller game, with just twenty percent of charters catching dorado and even fewer, (eleven percent) landing tuna. The dorado catches were incidental, taking lures intended for marlin. Catches were usually of just a single fish and weights were from 15 to 25 lbs. Yellow fin tuna catches were on a par with those of dorado, though we did have a few boats that caught three and one with five, but again, these were mostly incidental catches. We did hear of some long range boats, cleaning out huge tuna, fish over 300 lbs. It was quite surprising to see several sharks caught this week, most on soaked baits on the Pacific side. We had two average size Mako’s released and “Josephine” landed a 300 lb thresher shark, which put up a fight tougher than a big blue according to the angler – Russell Gallaway from Sacramento Ca. The fish was over 10 feet long and took a live bait intended for a tuna (see photo below). Inshore we had some nice red snapper catches, the odd sierra and skipjack. WEATHER CONDITIONS: Several overcast days, usually days started out sunny then clouded over by afternoon. Seas great on non-windy days – once the wind picked up we had “popcorn” seas. LOCATION: Golden Gate, Old Lighthouse, Chileno. BEST LURES: Live bait. Based on the catches of Pisces Sportfishing by Tracy Ehrenberg