PISCES WEEKLY FISH REPORT FEBRUARY 9TH TO 16TH, 2006 BILLFISH: After a slow start last week, boats headed to new locations and much bluer water in search of marlin and after a bit of a shaky start did very well as the week progressed. By mid week charters were fishing off of the 11.50 spot as well as Red Hill, where catches of two and three striped marlin per boat were common. Boats fished with live bait and on February 12th, catches again improved; this day “Andrea” released four stripers for Jaime Lobb and Josh Baro from Texas. Valerie also released four this day for Michael and Valerie Resch, Barry and Scott Knott, all from Canada. Next day out “Rebecca” scored five striped marlin for John Gunderman, William Horst and Jerry Friske, from St Paul, Minnesota, seven miles off of Cabeza de Ballena. Fishing again slowed on the 14th, as fish moved on to the San Jose area, causing quite a few blanks for boats that had met with success in the location closer to Cabo in previous days. As the week closed boats fished the Cabrillo Sea Mount and averaged one to three marlin each. “Yahoo” was the exception with six marlin for Mike Moren and friends from California. Nevertheless there were some boats that were “skunked” this week. Our overall catch success rate for all species combined was seventy-four percent, with forty-three percent of charters catching marlin. This number seems low, but this was because the first few days of the week were slow. Pisces anglers caught a total of seventy-one striped marlin, of which sixty-four were released. Average weight on the marlin was 150 to 180 lbs. OTHER SPECIES: Small game catches were not that great this week, with just fifteen percent of boats catching dorado, just one or two fish whilst trolling, in the 15 to 25 lb class. Yellow fin tuna catches were even slower at six percent. All the tuna were caught at the Jaime banks and were from 15 to 30 lbs. Sr Moment landed fourteen with a combination of lures and bait. Other boats averaged five to seven fish. Inshore sierra fishing remains good with boats catching between two and ten each. Some skipjacks and amberjacks were also caught. LOCATION: Starting out at Golden Gate, San Jaime, then moving to Cabeza de Ballena, 11.50 spot, then Cabrillo Sea Mount. WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear sunny skies, seas mostly calm. AVERAGE WATER TEMP:68 on the Pacific 70 F on the Cortez. BEST LURES: Live bait Based on the catches of Pisces by Tracy Ehrenberg