FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
www.flyhooker.com
Cabo Fish Report
July 21-27, 2008
WEATHER Hot and humid, that pretty much describes this last week's weather. We had nighttime lows in the low 80's and daytime highs reaching 100 degrees The humidity has been up there as well, sort of feels like I am living in southern Oklahoma lately. We had some cloud cover for the weekend as a little front blew over the top of us from the mainland. That dropped some rain up in the mountains but few of us on the coast got any rain, at least not enough to talk about.
WATER: This past week was almost a repeat of last week's water conditions with the exception that everything warmed up several degrees. Most of the week the water on both sides of the Cape was beautiful, blue and almost glassy. At the start of the week the swells on the Pacific side were in the 3-5 foot range and on the Cortez side they were about the same On the Pacific side of the Cape the water has warmed up to 83-84 degrees, on the Cortez side of the Cape it has been several degrees warmer at 85-87 degrees and very clear. The area immediately south of the Cape has been 82-83 degrees.
BAIT: Caballito were the bait of the week with a few Mullet in the mix. The price on these larger baits was $3 per bait. For inshore fishing Sardinas were available at $25 a scoop from the bait boats around the Palmilla area.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Well, for those of you who are interested in Blue Marlin, the water has reached the perfect temperature and the girls have shown up to party! Almost every day one of the boats has gotten into some decent blues and the favorite area has been between 150 and 210 degrees off of the arch out along the 1,000-fathom line. The best results so far have been on darker colored larger lures, greens and blacks along with a lot of purple have been working well. Just think of Bonita and Skipjack, that gives you the idea! There have been a few large fish reported but most of the blues so far have been between 150 and 300 pounds, only a few fish over that mark have been reported so far.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: There were a few scattered schools found this past week, but they were the exception. Unfortunately there have been few tuna underneath the porpoise that have been through our area, and the porpoise that have been through here have been very boats shy. Hmm, wonder if that has anything to do with Purse Seiners? Seems to me that since the U.S. decided to eliminate the "Dolphin Safe" label and requirements the porpoise have been worked hard and all the fish have been scooped up. Sigh. Of course, there is probably no correlation between the two facts.
DORADO The Dorado I heard of and saw this week were not large ones, but there were more of them showing up than last week. Not to say that you can go out and fill a cooler with fillets, but at least you can take some out for dinner! Most of these fish have been hooked on smaller lures and a few have been fooled by dropped back baits. An average per boat this week was probably in the one fish per boat rate, a few boats caught more than one, but many of them caught none.
WAHOO: The full moon is past and the Wahoo count is down to where I can count the ones reported to me on one hand. Most of those fish were incidental fish caught while fishing for Blue Marlin and they hit large dork colored lures pulled close to the boat.
INSHORE: With the calm water this week most of the Pangas were working just off the beach for Sailfish and Striped Marlin as well as Dorado. Those boats working the beach did fair on Roosterfish on the Cortez side, the swells were still a bit large for close to the beach fishing on the Pacific past the lighthouse.
NOTES: I was hoping the music for this week was going to be the stone guys installing the granite countertop in the kitchen, but I guess we are on Mexican time here, I heard no noise down there today, sigh. Anyway, the warming water has brought the big fish in our area and we are just eager as all get out to hook up something over 500 pounds. Until next week, tight lines!