Overall Catch Success Rate All Species Combined 100%
Numbers at a glance: Billfish 91%, Dorado 73%, Tuna 35%, Small Game 20%
BILLFISH: We just want the whole world to know how fantastic fishing is in Baja California Sur right now, not just Cabo, but the East Cape and La Paz too. Surely this is the best fishery in the world; year round catches incredible numbers of game fish, perfect weather and some of the best crews on the planet. We would be hard pressed to remember a slow week in 2013. This period was no exception with a perfect score; every boat out caught fish. This week we had a great catches of striped marlin and quite a few sailfish, but as well as releasing a billfish or two, or more, boats loaded up on dorado and tuna, so had plenty of eating fish to bring back. We had some exceptional catches such as those aboard Pisces Tracy Ann on August 6th for the Arriazola family from Houston, Texas. They had amazing day fishing over a wide area starting out three miles off of Land’s End and ending up twenty five miles out. The day started off well when they caught an approximately 250 lb. blue marlin, followed by a striped marlin & sailfish, before heading out to the tuna where they managed to land five football size fish. The blue marlin took a petrolero lure. On August 3rd Pisces 70 ft. Queenship, Petrolero had a fabulous day for Steve Poe & friends from Dublin, California, releasing six striped marlin up to 120 lbs. & landing five dorados & six white skipjacks (the kind you can eat). Another hot boat this week was Pisces Adriana with six marlin nine miles off of the lighthouse for David Howie, from Lincoln, California. A nice mixed day was had by Pisces La Brisa August 7th with two striped marlin & a sailfish released, two tuna, three dorado & a wahoo for Richard Fair and family from Oklahoma City. Ninety one percent of our boats caught billfish this week giving us a total of 110 fish, breaking down into 100 striped marlin, 8 sailfish & 2 blue marlin.
OTHER SPECIES: Dorado catches are definitely starting to climb, with seventy three percent of our charters catching between one and eight fish. Pisces Ruthless seemed to have a knack for finding this species, with several days of half a dozen or more caught. One of the better days for this boat was with James Davis from Brington, MI aboard who caught eight and released one striped marlin as well. Our total catch was of 157 fish. Yellow fin tuna started to show up in numbers towards the end of the week, with big schools found at San Jaime on the Pacific & at the Herradura. Again Ruthless was one of the top boats; on August 9th they had Dan Steren & friends aboard from California, they caught twenty five tuna up to 25 lbs., plus a 40 lb. wahoo, a small dorado and also released a striped marlin - how about that for a fun day? Thirty five percent of our boats caught tuna with catches of one to twenty plus fish in the 15 to 30 lb. class. Our total tuna count was 173 fish. Nice to see some consistency on wahoo this week though when caught it was always a single fish and no bigger than 50 lbs. – a prized catch, always make sure you take this fish with you, even if you don’t want to take it home have some cooked during your stay in Cabo. This is one if not the best eating fish there is. Inshore and from the surf, roosterfish could be caught in the 20 to 40 lb. category as well as some cubera snapper, jack crevalle and both black and white skipjack. Remember the white on is the good eating kind, the black should be released.
WEATHER: August 4th we had an early morning squall come through Cabo, causing the Port Captain to close the port, but boats has already left and were conveniently out of radio range... basically it was some thunder & lightening, a much needed light rain and choppy seas for about an hour. The rest of this period we had pretty smooth seas and clear skies, with hardly any humidity.
LOCATION: We fished almost the full gamut of our day range this week, from Destiladeras on the Cortez to San Jaime on the Pacific with boats three to twenty five miles offshore.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 83 F
BEST LURES; Live bait for striped marlin & sailfish, petrolero for blue marlin, cedar plugs for tuna, green colored lures for dorado
Based on the catches of Pisces by Tracy Ehrenberg