FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
www.flyhooker.com
http://captgeo.wordpress.com/
Cabo Fish Report
March 19-25, 2012
WEATHER: We had another great week on the weather front, if you like it 65 degrees in the morning and 85 degrees during the day, with plenty of sun and mostly light winds. If you don't like that kind of weather, then there is something wrong with you! No rain of course, but we did have some wind kick up on Sunday morning.
WATER: At the end of the week surface conditions on the Sea of Cortez side were great with swells at 2-4 feet and no wind chop close to shore, and only a bit in the afternoons farther out than 10 miles. On the Pacific side the swells were 3-6 feet most of the time with some chop on the water the farther north you went. Water temperaturs on the Cortez side were ranging between 70-75 degrees with the warmer water being more to the north or farther out, the cooler water just to the east of a line running along the beach on the Pacific side and extending out over the water from northwest to southeast. On the Pacific side the water was pretty much 66-67 degrees everywhere and a bit on the green side.
BAIT: Caballito and Mackerel as well as a few Mullet could be had for $3 per bait. A few of the bait boats had "frozen" ballyhoo for between $3-4, each, but you never know how many times they had been "frozen".
FISHING:
BILLFISH: We finally had an up-tick in the catch ratios on Striped Marlin this week. With an increase in numbers seen in the area from the 1150 to outside Punta Gorda came an increase in the number of Marlin that were hungary. This combination provided action that resulted in almost every boat that went looking for a Marlin having success. A few boats did better than others, I know of a few that were releasing up to 5 per day, but most boats were getting one or two releases per trip. The fish were there in pretty good number but were not really hot and heavy in the lures, most of them were caught dropping back live bait to fish that were just checking out the lures. A few were caught by throwing a bait ahead of them while they were tailing downswell. A number of boats started to chase what they thought were marlin feeding, but it ended up that there were a large number of Thresher Sharks in the area feeding as well.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: Once again there were not a large number of Yellowfin Tuna found this week, and it was suprising since there were so many pods of white bellied porpoise to be found. A few boats got into some very small fish, and a few others got lucky and caught one or two fish in the 25 pound class, but there were no large numbers of large sizes reported to me.
DORADO: The warm water on the Cortez side of the Cape did produce some large fish this week, but not very many of them, and there were only a few boats that found them at all. I did see one fish that might have gone 50 pounds and several others that would have been in the 30 pound range, but there were no boats that I heard of that came inwith more than two Dorado, and to be real, most of the fish were smaller ones. Live bait dropped back where a Marlin came up resulted in most of the larger fsh, and boats fishing the shallow reefs and chumming caught most of the smaller fish.
WAHOO: None that I heard of this week, but perhaps the warming water and full moon of spring that is coming up will change these stats.
INSHORE: While the inshore fishing was the best way to go for the past several months due to the large numbers of Sierra and Yellowtail, this week the action dropped off a bit. The better captains were still able to put their anglers on good numbers of fish but overall success rates were down a bit. On the positive note, there was less pressure on these fish since the cruisers were going offshore for Marlin once again. The bite was still fair, with most anglers getting at least one or two nice Yellowtail to 30 pounds, but the better boats were still managing 4 to 6 per trip. Sierra numbers were down a bit as well with only a few boats managing to limit out, but anyone trying was able to get some for dinner. Sea Lions were a problem for boats fishing to the east of the lighthouse on the Pacific side, managing to find and gang up on any fish hooked up. There were decent numbers of small Roosterfish to be found in the surf, and anglers fishing off the beach did fair on Sierra and small Roosterfish early in the week, later in the week large swells caused some issues for the beach fishermen.
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe! It's a really great one.
NOTES: It is approaching the end of Spring break and the beginning of Easter Week so things will continue to be a bit rowdy at the beaches for a while. This morning we went on Daylight Saving Time, it was a bit strange and will take a while to get used to. Our friend Brian Flynn (think Santana, Beck, Loverboy, Molly Hatchet, Guess Who) has been busy playing six days a week since he got back from assisting our friend Mike Hill with the recording of his new album "No Bad Days". They formed a group called Cabo Cowboys with Roger Gillespie on drums, Oliver C. Brown on percussion, Hal Ratliff on keyboards, Brian Flynn on guitar, Ernie Nunez on electric bass, Brian Brazil on harmonica, Miguel Hill on vocals and Rick Dale with backing vocals. You can check it out at cabocowboysmusic.com and see if you like it!
Have a great week, catch lots of fish, and get those reservations for Cabo made!