Cabo San Lucas Fishing Report Capt. George Landrum Fly Hooker Sportfishing [email protected] www.flyhooker.com CABO SAN LUCAS FISH REPORT FOR FEBRUARY 18-24, 2002 WEATHER: The week started off a bit blustery with strong winds out of the northwest. We had another brief exposure to some gusty easterly winds on Friday afternoon and northwesterly winds Sunday morning. Looks as if March is coming in all right! The temperatures have warmed up quite a bit and it is no longer necessary to wear a sweater in the evening. Our daytime highs reached into the high 80’s one day and our lows have been in the low 70’s, high 60’s. No rain this week, a change from the experiences of the last month. (Cielo sin Nubes) WATER: We have had a plume of warm water working its way towards us from the west, and it looks as if it finally reached us on the 24th. The water is 72-74 degrees and very blue. It started the week on the outside of San Jaime Banks and has spent 7 days pushing 28 miles. We hope it means that the runs to the fish are going to get shorter soon, but that remains to be seen. That is on the Pacific side, back on the Sea of Cortez we are looking at a pocket of cool water on top of the Gordo banks that is in the 67-68 degree range, this water has been planted on the banks all week. The surface conditions varied day to day, depending on the winds force and direction but the swells have been small at 2-4 feet. (Sabor a Mi) BAIT: No problem with bait availability, there has been plenty of Mackerel available this week. The problem has been getting the size you need. Most of the baits I have been seeing have been very large ones, 12-15 inches, fine for Marlin but a bit on the large size for Dorado and the football tuna. Price has remained the same at $2 per bait, no Sardinas to report. (Viene Clareando) FISHING: BILLFISH: The Marlin have been scattered this week and not many of boats have been finding them. Striped Marlin are being found in the warm water edge as the plume approaches us but not a lot of them have been hungry. The few caught have been on an equal mix of live bait and lures with the average size in the 90-120 range. I would venture to guess that there was one Marlin flag for every 12 boats returning this week, with a fortunate few flying two flags. (Barrios de San Antonio) YELLOWFIN TUNA: For any quantity it was a long run to get to these fish this past week. The concentrations were with the Dolphin and they were 28-45 miles out, slowly getting closer as the week progressed. No extremely large fish were in with the Dolphin but for the boats that made the run and found them, the action was steady on football 8-20 pound fish. Feathers and cedar plugs got most of the attention with a few caught on live bait. (Bajo las Sombras) DORADO: Find the floating debris, find the Dorado! One exception this week was on Friday when a school cruised by 20 miles to the west. A steady movement to the southeast had the boats strung out as they covered 10 miles in 5 hours. The concentration was thick enough and other action slow enough that there were 40 boats working the school at one time. Nice sized fish this week with the average size around 15-20 pounds. Lures worked on the stray fish but live bait was the ticket otherwise. (Besos Rosas) WAHOO: A few fish were found under the floating debris but there was no concentration of them, that’s for sure. Most anything else caught was an incidental catch. A few people have asked me about all the Wahoo flags on some of the boats and I have to tell them that some of the crews put up the Wahoo flags if they have been catching a lot of Sierra. (Ojos de Mar) INSHORE: Action has been slow inshore this week with the exception of the Sierra bite. That takes place very early in the morning and it is easy to miss the action. We thought that we were going to have the action on Yellowtail take off when there were reports of a few being caught at the arch on Tuesday, but they never did show up in force, we will have to keep our fingers crossed. Other than that, the inshore catch has consisted of the scattered Bonito, small Dorado and Skipjack. Large swells at the end of the week made it difficult to get close to shore on the Pacific side. (Cotton Candy) SQUID: Hey, a new category! I don’t think this one will stick around for very long but thought I’d toss it in for at least this week. Concentrations of Giant Squid were found this week from 30 to 5 miles offshore. Want Calamari rings the size of fruitcakes? These squid were 3-5 feet long and weighed between 40 and 80 pounds. There was not a lot of fight to them but they did provide a steady pull, and they were very good eating! A chunk of cut bait on a hook and a pull to set the hook and away you went! A very interesting sight to see on the surface! Concentrations covered several acres and were south and west of the cape. (Lejos de Aqui) NOTES: Lots of whales still out there so be careful if you leave before light. The Gray Whales are inshore and there are Humpbacks offshore. Offshore fish were a long run this week, we sure hope the action picks up closer to home this week! Enjoy fishing wherever you are and when you get home, see if you can find some music by “Lara and Reyes”, such as the wonderful album “Guitarras Hermanas”, Higher Octave Music, 1995, and sit back and relax! Until next week, Tight Lines! "Fly Hooker" Daily Report “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 18 FEBRUARY, 2002 Don Cartner and his wife Judy fished the “Fly Hooker” today and are going again on the 21st. Don has fished with us before and was looking forward to a good trip but as we were meeting last night the wind was howling. Ever since yesterday at around 9am it has blown without letup. We checked out a few web sites and there is a low pressure area north-east of Hawaii that has caused this. We hope it goes away in the next day or so. Today the water was too uncomfortable to go far offshore so the targeted species was Sierra. Juan and Manuel ran the boat up the to Westin and started fishing there. No bait was available (they needed Sardinas) so they were stuck with lures. They had one strike and lost the fish and then boated a large Sierra. Don said the water was fairly comfortable inside and they were glad to have missed the mess outside. Let’s hope the water lays down before Thursday! Until then, Tight Lines. “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 19 FEBRUARY, 2002 Dr. David Kalayjan is back in Cabo, this time with more friends and booked the “Fly Hooker” over a month ago for today and the 25th. This morning he dropped off four of his friends, Judy, Debbie, Joe and his wife Emily and told Mary that he was going golfing! Maybe he will get out on the boat on Monday? Well, Joe and the girls have no experience with this type of fishing and let Manual and Rikko (Juan is sick) know that they will need help. No problemo! The wind finally died down last night so the boat heads south for the Tuna. 27 miles out they get into the Dolphin and the strikes start coming. A 40# Yellowfin, one at 30#’s and 8 football sized fish provide a lot of fillets and while the fish were being filleted a Dorado struck! Not a bad day for the beginners! Joe felt a bit queasy but everyone else was fine and they all had a great time! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 20 FEBRUARY, 2002 Chuck, Mark and Ron are here on a guy’s vacation, escaping the cold weather at home. A couple of days fishing sounded real good to them so they booked the “Fly Hooker” for today and will leave a second day pending. Action is what they crave, plus a chance to take some fillets home with them. Juan is still sick so it is Manuel and Rikko again and it is off to the same area they fished yesterday. Nada, zilch, the fish and Dolphin had moved on. They worked their way back to the north and at a distance of 28 miles, at noon, Manuel yelled down from the bridge that there were Squid up ahead. Chuck, Mark and Ron thought that was a great sign since if there were squid spotted there must be something feeding on them. Rikko ran around quickly changing some of the rigs and chopping up some of the bait. As the guys looked forward they spotted large shapes on the water that had to be fish feeding on the squid. Not until they got close did they realize that what they were seeing were the squid themselves! They were 4 to 6 feet long! I would hate to tangle with any fish large enough to eat one of these guys! In an hour they managed to catch ten of these monsters, all between 40 and 70 pounds in size, wow, Calamari rings the size of a fruitcake. They said that there was not much of a fight, instead it was a steady pulling action. They would get a squid close to the boat then it would jet off again, it was just a matter of wearing them out. Many of them were lost as the hooks pulled loose of the tentacles. That was the action for the day, a bit of a different experience in Cabo. There were some very good pictures taken and you should be able to check them out soon on the website. “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 21 FEBRUARY, 2002 Don Cartner is back on the boat today but his wife Judy is staying at the resort. Instead, his fishing partner is Alex, a friend of ours and whom Don met a few nights ago. With the weather so much better than it was on Monday, Don has his hopes up for better fishing to go with it. The boat is being operated by Manuel and Juan today and they head out to the west where a warm water plume seems to be promising. They end up going out 35 miles to find fish but they discover them eventually. Don is the angler with the largest fish of the day. A Striped Marlin came up into the lure pattern and swatted at one of them. Juan tossed out a live bait and the hungry fish ate it right away. The fight was fairly short at 20 minutes and when the fish came to the boat Juan saw that it was bleeding and the decision was made to take the fish. It weighed approximately 90 pounds. Alex had the action on the Dorado, with one Bull and one Cow, about 25 and 15 pounds and one of the two guys ended up reeling in a Bonito that must have gone all of 20 pounds. Ah, a trip where they caught fish, thanks guys, we are glad you had a good time! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 22 FEBRUARY, 2002 It is Friday and Chuck, Mark and Roy have invited me to go with them for a day of fishing. I don’t often get the chance to go myself so it is a real treat. Out west towards the south side of the San Jaime Bank is the target for us and on the way out we pass a few boats fishing for the giant squid. Not for us today, the guys had enough of those creatures on Wednesday! On we continue and while still about 10 miles from our destination Manuel receives a call from one of his buddies. * miles ahead they have found some Dolphin with Yellowfin Tuna and so far there are only three boats there, we better hurry if we want to get into the action! The call was received on a channel almost everyone listens to and by the time we got there (still cruising out) there were over 20 boats on the scene. From a distance it appeared as if there were two schools of fish since the boats were separated into two groups. One group kept getting smaller as the boats migrated to the other section. What we found out later was the number of boats had put the Dolphin off their feed and the Tuna had gone down. At about the same time one of the boats had spotted a free swimming school of Dorado, fish not associated with anything floating, and everyone moved over to concentrate on them. We arrived on the edge of the fray and were quickly into a nice 15-20 pound Dorado. Mark was the lucky angler there and the fish was in the boat pretty quickly. The rest of our live baits were pretty large, Mackerel in the 12-15 inch range and while they would get chased and banged up, most of the Dorado had a hard time eating them. Cut pieces were tried but the fish were moving and focused on live bait only. After I counted 40 boats in the immediate area it was decided to leave and work our way to the northwest and the banks to see if the Dolphin had come back up and the Tuna bite had recovered. We had no luck and at noon were headed back to the Dorado concentration. Most of the boats had left already and we thought that our chances might improve but it was for naught. we trolled back in, hoping to come across a Marlin tailing but again, no luck. At about the time we started to return the wind switched to an easterly direction and the water chopped up a lot. It was a slow return to the Marina but at least we had not been skunked. Thanks for the invite guys! “FLY HOOKER” FISH REPORT FOR 23 FEBRUARY, 2001 Ray and Gerald are fishing with us today. Ray fished with us last August 18th, Gerald somehow managed to miss the boat that day (Tequilaitis). Check out the #450 Black Marlin Ray caught on that trip in the Photo section on the website! This Cabo trip was short notice and they realize that the fishing is an on-off thing right now. Gerald actually managed to get up before Ray and they were both at the boat on time. Manuel and Juan remembered Ray and they decided that they should try the area to the south of the Jaime Banks again, that is where the fish had been showing up. 30 miles out they got into the Dolphin and managed to get a little Tuna action going. Nothing big was caught but the 8 or 10 fish they did catch were all between 10-15 pounds. They also caught a few big Bonito. With fish in the box they worked the area outside the schools with Marlin lures and also tried slow trolling live baits. There was a chance for either a large Yellowfin or a Marlin but they had no strikes. The water was nice and the trip was a good one, plenty of Tuna fillets to take back with them. Ray said that the next scheduled trip will focus on Blue and Black Marlin but these short notice trips are a blast also. Thanks guys, we look forward to seeing you again! Until then Tight Lines from George, Mary, Juan and Manuel, the “Fly Hooker” Crew