CABO SAN LUCAS FISH REPORT
Capt. George Landrum
Fly Hooker Sportfishing
www.flyhooker.com
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
November 22-28, 2010
Weather: The temperatures are still dropping week by week as our "winter" approaches. Most of you will laugh, but it has been a very chilly (for us) 63 degrees in the mornings and evenings, requiring windbreakers or light sweaters. It's funny to see all our visitors running around in shorts and t-shirts while we are shivering! We had a little bit of breeze this week, mostly from the northwest, but nor a real strong wind. Our daytime highs got up in the low 90's and we had mostly sunny skies.
Water: At the end of the week we had a solid 79-80 degrees everywhere you looked except for the Pacific side out past the San Jaime and the Golden Gate Banks. Once you got about 5 miles past them, the water temps dropped to 70-71 degrees. That cooler water also had a slight green tinge to it, but not so bad that we did not fish there.
Bait: Bait has been a big issue for the past few weeks as there has not been very much of it available, at least the good stuff. The full moon made catching Caballito difficult, the area has not had many Mackerel show up yet so the majority of bait available has been very small Caballito, a few Mullet and green jacks. There have been some Sardinas available up in San Jose.
FISHING
Billfish: The 80 degree water we have had this week has still provided a few Blue and Black Marlin to give anglers a fight, but I did not hear of any that were larger than #250. These fish were caught on the Cortez side around the 1150 and the outer Gorda Banks. There have been plenty of Striped Marlin around, but they have not been in the mood to bite. Boats have been seeing between 4 and 20 per day and most of the time have had just looky-loos where the fish follow a lure or bait for a while then take off. The best catches I have seen have been two fish per trip with an occasional Dorado or Tuna tossed into the box. Most of the fish have been on the Pacific side, within 5 miles of the beach. I think the main problem has been the moon phase as we are just coming off of the full moon.
Yellowfin Tuna: On again, off again, close to shore then 30 miles out, there was no way to predict where you would fins the Tuna this week with the exception of the Inman and Gorda Banks, and even they were iffy as sometimes the fish were there but would not bite. For the most part, boats did not get into any numbers of fish, but there were a couple of exceptions. We had one boat in the middle of the week come to the dock with four Tuna flags flying and each of the fish was over 70 pounds. He found those fish in porpoise out at the temperature break outside of the Golden Gate Bank, but the weather that day was too choppy for most of the boats and anglers.
Dorado: Once again we did not see any large numbers of Dorado with a couple of exceptions. A few boats did come in flying multiple flags and after asking the crew what they had done, I found that two of the boats had found a large piece of wood and had a great time loading up with limits of fish that averaged 15 pounds. A couple of the boats had managed to find small schools of little fish averaging 10 pounds just off the beach between the Gray Rock area and the Palmilla point and had kept one fish in the water while chunking for the others, once again reaching near limits for their anglers. These were the exceptions though, as most of the boats felt lucky to get one or two fish during a full day trip.
Wahoo: As a result of being on the back side of the moon, the Wahoo bite we had been experiencing dropped off quite a bit. There were still fish out there, but not in the numbers we had been seeing for the past two weeks. Fish that were caught were found between the Arch and San Jose close to the beach in 300-400 feet of water with a few fish in a lot closer. Most of the fish were smaller than last weeks, averaging 25 pounds.
Inshore: Small Roosterfish, and occasional Yellowtail, some decent Sierra and an occasional Amberjack rounded up the normal inshore catch this week. A few Pangas got into some grouper and snapper, and a few focused on the Dorado, but the mainstay was small Roosters and Sierra. Both sides of the Cape produced, but the Sierra were more concentrated on the Pacific side.
Notes: If you are getting your own fishing licenses, you must have pesos!!! The people that sell the licenses around the marina can no longer take dollars from anyone. Get pesos the day before! No one has change for your US $100 at 6AM.
My music for this weeks report was deep in the back of my shelf. I pulled out a tape of Pat Macdonald and Barbara K. from 1986 playing as "Timbuk 3" on the album titled " Greeting From Timbuk 3", a Columbia Records release. Until next week, tight lines!
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