PISCES WEEKLY FISH REPORT MAY 6TH TO 12TH, 2005 BILLFISH: We are pleased to report an increase on striped marlin catches, in fact towards the end of the week catches of two to four marlin per boat were quite common. As the squid in the area decreased and bait became scarcer the fish got hungry. Nevertheless, most of the action is still quite a long way off; with most hook ups occurring in the Destiladeres area. Some boats got lucky closer to home, such as “Rebecca” on May 12th, who caught and released three striped marlin and one sailfish, for Steve Albert from Myrtle Beach, S.C fishing with Ed Shrewbury from Orange Park, Fl, in the Chileno area. On May 6th, “Ruthless” caught five stripers for Dale Hageman and friends from Oklahoma. This same boat scored another five on May 10th this time for Dennis Christensen from Papillion, NE. Lonnie Nolan and Ray Orlowski from Tampa on their annual Cabo trip were not disappointed with their three fish aboard “Rebecca”. Not everybody was lucky there were several boats that were “skunked”, but all saw fish. Last week we had quite a few foul hooked fish, as they would come up to look at the baits lethargically not really attacking in the normal manner, meaning that some ended up being snagged. Our overall catch success rate this week was eighty-six percent, with seventy-nine percent catching marlin. The Rolex-IGFA Offshore World Championship, starts on Monday and will be over four days. With temperatures being to climb, we should see good numbers of fish caught in the upcoming days. Pisces anglers caught a total of 114 billfish this week, of which 110 stripe marlin were released, along with five sailfish. OTHER SPECIES: Not much happening on smaller game. That’s not to say that there are not there, but rather boats are heading up the coast for bigger prey. We had just a few football size tuna this week and the numbers of dorado weren’t much better. Inshore there were just a few skipjacks, amberjacks and some sierra. LOCATION: Cortez side from Chileno to Destiladeres. AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 72 F WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear, sunny skies, mostly calm seas. BEST LURES: Live bait. Based on the catches of Pisces Fleet by Tracy Ehrenberg