FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
www.flyhooker.com
http://captgeo.wordpress.com/
Cabo Fish Report
October 23-30, 2011
WEATHER: My Favorite time of the year, the fish are biting, the hot hot humid days have gone away. Daytime high's in the low 90's, nighttime low 70's. Light breezes in the afternoons. No need for air conditioning. And the fish are biting!
WATER: The best fishing has been on the Pacific side with San Jaime and Golden Gate Banks holding temperatures of 83-84 degrees and the best fishing. Water temps over by Gorda Banks are about 84-87, but they don't seem to be holding much fish there. The Pacific side is the place to be!
BAIT: Bait, at least good live bait was hard to come by this week. Many of the boats were going with frozen Ballyhoo instead, at least you could get those, but they were expensive at $4 each. There were a few live baits of the larger size, but not much in the way of quality baits. Toward San Jose you could get decent Sardinas, and the farther you got from Cabo the more you got for your money.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: The billfish have picked up this week, more striped marlin are being caught, and the sailfish numbers are remaining up there also. They usually feed with the dorado, but have heard reports of the sailfish being caught along side the yellowfin. I did not hear of any large blue or black marlin this, week, but some in the 100-200 lb range. George: We caught Sailfish and Striped Marlin outside Mag Bay on the way down, the water was 81 degrees and there were decent concentrations of Striped Marlin at the south end of the Ridge and on the lower Thetis Bank. More Sailfish again locally at the San Jaime Bank but we did not have a Blue or Black come in on the lures the entire trip.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: Tuna Tuna Tuna, I want Sushi! Lots of tuna around which is good thing with the Western Outdoor News Tuna Jackpot coming up this Thursday and Friday. Most of the tuna I have seen coming in have been in the 30-40 lb range with a few 60 -100lb range. Reports of 200+ lb fish jumping, but couldn't get them to bite. Tossing ballyhoo, mackerel, cedar plugs, they just wouldn't bite. Whoever figures out what they want will make some money this week if they are in the tournament! George: We were hoping to fish the Finger Bank on the way down and tried to time it so we could, but instead we passed the bank at 4AM. I saw three long range boats out of San Diego anchored up as well as a few private boats, but there was no one on the decks fishing except for a deckhand on each boat keeping the chum going. I heard one private boat captain talking to another on the radio and he reported catching three Yellowfin over 200 pounds while fly-lining live mackerel, but he was there for two days. I saw nice meter marks from big fish on the west side of the Golden Gate Bank but they were deep, 250 to 300 feet. Locally the boats were finding the football and school fish just 6-10 miles off the beach on the Pacific side, but every school had a wad of boats working it.
DORADO: Lots, and lots of dorado this week again. If you are trolling inshore, they are hard to miss. A lot of small ones, I even saw someone with a 2 lb fish the other day. Normally those are thrown back, but this one didn't make it. Most of the fish are in the 8-15 lb, with some hitting the 30lb mark. George: We gave up on Dorado after a while, it was hard to avoid them! You only need so many, after that they were getting in the way!
WAHOO: I have seen a couple wahoo flags this week. Fish in the 30 lb range. Not usually a lot this time of year. George: The owner of the boat I came down on caught his personal best at 65 pounds off of the upper Thetis Bank and we had quite a few other strikes during the trip, all of them in 15 to 30 fathoms of water whenever we neared shore.
INSHORE: The water temperatures are staying warm, so still some nice roosterfish around, snapper, groupers, almost November, but I haven't seen any sierra yet. The Dorado fishing is also good close to shore.
FISH RECIPE: posted on the blog Thursday or Friday.
NOTES: As you have noticed, this fishing report is a little short. Most of you have figured out that I, Mary, am writing the report today. George will be back sometime today and give you a better report. He left Monday to bring a boat down and stopped to fish a few days at Mag Bay. He was hoping to spend a few hours at Finger Banks this morning. All I know for sure is that he caught a couple of 50 lb wahoo. I didn't pay attention to anything else he caught, I was daydreaming about how I am going to eat some of that wahoo! My favorite Sam Choy recipe with the mango salsa! I'll see if I can get him to give you all a trip report for the ride down.
In the meantime Tight Lines and good luck to all of you in the Tuna Tournament!