FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
www.flyhooker.com
Cabo Fish Report
Jan. 1-7, 2008
WEATHER: Here at the end of the week we are in a wintertime heat wave as our morning temperatures have been in the high 60's for the past four days and the daytime highs have been in the mid 80's. The skies have been clear and there has been no rain.
WATER: On the Sea of Cortez from a line due east of Cabo and north of that line the water was green and cold with the water at 71 degrees and dropping down to 69 degrees off of Punta Gorda. All the banks on the Pacific side, the Finger, Golden Gate and the San Jaime, had water at 73-75 degrees and the water was considerably cleaner. The 95 Spot, 1150 and the Cabrillo Seamount were on the line and for the most part saw the warmer, cleaner water. Surface conditions were good all week long close to home. There was an occasional day of breezy conditions on the Pacific but nothing too uncomfortable. Up on the Sea of Cortez, once you went north of the Punta Gorda area the northerly winds made fishing very uncomfortable.
BAIT: Just like last week, the bait was mostly Mackerel but there were a few Caballito in the mix. These larger baits were the normal $2 per bait. Up in San Jose there were Sardinas available at $25 a scoop, but they were tiny ones with the biggest only 2 inches, better for chum that as bait.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Striped Marlin were the fish of the week, no doubt about that. Almost every boat that went out caught at least one, and if they wanted to work at it a little bit there was no problem getting into double digit numbers. The great thing about it was you did not have to go far for them. If you wanted to burn the fuel the water allowed a trip to the Finger Bank, and there were still great concentrations of fish there, but closer to home you did almost as well and did not spend so much time in transit. Most boats did just fine drifting live bait but I always like it better when the fish appear in the lure pattern and you get to drop back a rigged bait and see them eat it. We had several clients this week that did just that, only they dropped back a streamer on a fly rod and hooked up!
YELLOWFIN TUNA We still have not seen any solid concentrations of Yellowfin this season. Once in a while a boat will find a school with porpoise but they have been few and far between, and the size of fish has been lacking, most of them have been football fish. They have mostly been found on the Pacific side outside the banks, but a few schools were reported within a mile or two of the coast on that side as well.
DORADO: I saw a few more Dorado flags this week than last week and we are hoping that the water stays clean and above 70 degrees for a while longer, maybe we will continue to find them. I had a friend get two fish in the 30-pound class early in the week up past the Golden Gate Bank, and there are still scattered fish in the 10-15 pound class being caught close to the beach on the Pacific.
WAHOO: I did not hear of any concentrations of Wahoo this reporting period but I did see one of about 70 pounds being wheeled along the Marina in a cooler, a really nice fish!
INSHORE: There was no change in the inshore report for this report period. Sierra were the fish of the week for the inshore fishermen and they were consistently on the feed off of the Solmar-Finesterra beach early in the morning. They seemed to move up to the north later in the day. Yellowtail continued to produce scattered action off of the rocky points on the Cortez side with some decent fish being taken off of Gray Rock and the drop at Chileno.
NOTES: We are seeing more whales every week. The weather has been great, my golf game is sadly lacking consistency and my ears had a treat as I wrote this report while listening to some cuts from the CD collection "Watching the Dark, the history of Richard Thompson", a 1993 release by RYKODISC. Until next week, tight lines!