Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
November 5 – 11, 2012

WEATHER: I love this time of the year in Cabo. We get the nice cool evenings when the temperature is right around 80 degrees, mornings with a slight chill with low 70′s and daytime where you can warm up a bit in the low 90′s. No sweaters needed at night, but no air conditioning either! This week we had mostly sunny days with light clouds for most of the week. The winds were light except on Saturday when they freshened up a bit, but they never got strong.
WATER: On the Cortez side of the Cape this week we were seeing water from the beach out to the 1,000 fathom line showing 82.4 to 84.4 degrees while just past this area the water warmed up to the mid 85 degree range and did touch 86 degrees in a few areas. The water was mostly clean and blue with a few of the area in cooler water showing a touch of green, but nothing easy to notice. Add in the flat water with little wind and no swells to speak of and it was like being on a pool table. On the Pacific side it was 81 to 83 degrees all along the coast line from the beach out past the banks. The water was clean and blue with small swells and almost no wind most days. It did blow a bit on Saturday but not hard enough or long enough to get the swells up, just a bit of chop.
BAIT: Same as last week, Caballito and Mullet could be had at $3 each. Once the water cools a few more degrees there should be a few Mackerel showing up as well. There were Sardinas at $25 a bucket and plenty of them as boats were supplying enough for the Tuna Tournament. You could get frozen horse Bally-hoo at $3 each.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: I heard of no reports I could verify of any Blue or Black Marlin this week, and I spent two days with a friend looking for only those fish while the W.O.N. Tuna tournament was going on. There were some Striped Marlin caught, but almost all were on the Pacific side, close to the beach. A few boats were dropping live bait down halfway to the bottom or all the way to the bottom and getting a few hook-ups, and there were a few fish spotted tailing that were willing to eat a live bait. Just as last week, I estimate that about 20% or fewer of the boats were able to catch a Striped Marlin this week. There were also few Sailfish, though a couple were caught, and they were found on the Cortez side in the warmer water.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: Fish of the week! The only reason they have edged out the Dorado is the number of boats that were targeting them this week. Thursday and Friday were the two fishing days for the Yamaha/Western Outdoor News Tuna Tournament and with 121 teams entered the pressure to find a big fish was heavy. Since practically the only area that has been producing any Yellowfin fish of quality has been the Gordo Banks, my friend Mike of”Renegade Mike” told me it was almost a parking lot with over 70 boats positioned on and around the area on the first day. The pressure was too much for some of the boats on the second day so they left and targeted Dorado and Wahoo instead. The results were impressive with the largest fish caught being 372 pounds! Mike caught the largest Tuna of day one with a #266 and ended up taking second overall along with a fish that would have been fourth place if the money had paid out that far. There were a dozen fish over 200 pounds caught during the tournament, and all but one came from the Gordo area. The tournament has no idea of the numbers of smaller fish but there were plenty of them! Most of these fish were taken by boats that were chunking bonito or chumming with Sardinas, and you were not getting bit if you did not have flouro-carbon leader, the fish were very shy. The only other area that produced Yellowfin was a school on the second day approximately 12 miles to the north of the Golden Gate Bank. I only saw 6 boats working this school, four of them flying kites, but one of the 200+ pound fish was caught from this school.

DORADO: I think the results of the Tuna tournament speak of the Dorado fishing as far as size goes as there were no Dorado weighed over 30 pounds, even with $78,000 U.S. on the line the second day. But there were lot’s of them out there! Almost all the action was on the Pacific side between the Los Arcos area all the way to Todo Santos. Fishing within two miles of the beach using drifted or slow trolled live bait, or fishing a spread of lures, every boat that tried was able to limit out on fish that ran from 10 to 20 pounds with a few to 25 pounds. As usual, getting the first one hooked up and leaving it in the water behind the boat resulted in more fish coming in and better catches. With most of the boats on the first day concentrating on Yellowfin the pressure on the Dorado was light, but on the second day of the tournament it picked up a bit. Now that the tournament is over you can expect the pressure on the Dorado to return as they are the base of the charter operations this time of year.
WAHOO: Once again Wahoo action was sporadic with quite a few small fish caught and no really large ones. The action was spread out all over the place with fish being caught around the Punta Gordo area and up off of Todo Santos. Looking for them along the 50 fathom line or closer in resulted in fish that were in the 20 pound class. The largest one weighed in during the Tuna tournament was only #30.4 and ended up taking the $78,000 prize in the Wahoo/Dorado category. My math makes that fish worth $2,565.78 a pound!
INSHORE: There was no change in the inshore fishing report for this week . You can almost consider the Yellowfin, Skipjack and Dorado bite as inshore fishing since the main concentration was in less than 300 feet of water, and since it has been so good, few of the Pangas did any fishing right on the beach. Those that did found a few smaller sized Roosterfish, plenty of Needle-fish, a scattering of Jack Crevalle but not a lot of anything else. I did hear of a few Sierra being caught, but not any large numbers.
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe! A really good one for Dorado!
NOTES: The tournaments are now over and it is time to settle in for the season. It appears as if both the Tuna and Dorado may be here for a little while longer, at least for the next month or so. Hopefully the Striped Marlin bite will turn on soon. When we start to see more Mackerel in the bait supplies there should be more Striped Marlin showing. Remember, all I do is fishing (with a bit of golf thrown in) so you get a no non-sense, factual report on our conditions every week, and most of the time I have been on the water a day or two myself. I have had a few questions about how I get my information, and after 13 years here I have an amazing number of phone numbers that I work every week, besides by own experience. Combine the calls I make to Captains, I talk to great numbers of anglers, both clients and non-clients to find out how they did and where they went. This weeks report was written to the music of Brian Flynn once again as I am looking forward to his bands concert this Sunday at the outdoor amphitheater in the new cultural center. (Brian has played with Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Loverboy, Ralph Dinosaur, The Marshall Tucker Band, Molly Hatchett, Southern Rock Allstars and Guess Who). Looking forward to it! Until next week, tight lines!

And as always, George writes this report

and posts it on Sunday morning. So if you

can’t wait, click the “FOLLOW” on the top of the

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Number crunching the tournaments

I mentioned in my fish report this week that I was going to do some number crunching. I was interested in getting a general idea of the money spent during the past 10 days and how that was spread around, and what value that might give to our fishery. I am not an accountant, and all my data are just estimates, not intended to be the basis of anything other than satisfying my own curiosity. I found the information a bit surprising and thought that it might be of some interest to you.
First off, we had nine days of fishing scheduled during the past 11 days. Only eight days were fished due to weather issues. 27 boats fished for 2 days, 80 boats fished for another 2 days and 106 boats fished an additional 3 days for a total of 550 boat days. These are just tournament days and do not include any pre-fishing or practice days. The average tournament day was 12 hours, with getting bait in the morning to returning to the docks in the evening. That is a total of 6,600 engine hours. The average boat size was 50 feet with an average fuel burn of 10 gallons per hour between running hard to the grounds and back and trolling all day. Actually it was probably about 50% more, but the 10 gallons makes it easier to figure out. Total fuel used was 66,000 gallons based on that, and at a cost of $3.77 per gallon comes to a total of $248,820 spent at the fuel docks.
The first tournament has 206 anglers anglers here for at least 4 days, tournament 2 had 466 anglers for at least 3 days and tournament 3 had 703 anglers here for at least 5 days, for a total of 6,204 angler days. If each angler spent $200 a night for a room, on average, $150 per day on food and drinks and $100 per day shopping that comes to $450 per day per angler. Some spent less, some a lot more but all in all I think this is a decent estimate. Multiply $450 by 6,204 angler days and it comes to $2,791,800 spent on room, food and shopping. This does not include the cost of chartering a boat, tips, airfare, taxis, ect. Add in the money spent on fuel and approximately $3,000,000, at a minimum, came into our local economy in 10 days.
Now lets do a couple of other quick numbers. The first two tournaments had 51 billfish recorded as boated or released, the third tournament had 67 billfish either boated or released for a total of 118 billfish caught. Based on a low estimate of $3,000,000 spent, this means that each billfish this tournament season brought in $25,425 to the local economy.It would be interesting to see how much the commercial caught billfish bring in. Oh, that’s right, billfish are not allowed to be caught or sold by commercial boats in Mexico. I guess I never saw the 100′s of marlin being unloaded from long-liners in Mag Bay, and never say the commercial pangas harpooning them on Finger Banks. It must have been my imagination.
The four fish over 300 pounds brought to the scales during these three tournaments and the several fish that were underweight were donated to local charities. The 465 Blue Marlin caught during the Bisbee Black and Blue was worth $6,451 per pound to the team that caught it but brought in millions to the economy.
OK, that’s it, just a few things I was wondering about, and now my curiosity is satisfied. I hope I didn’t bore you!

Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
October 23 – 28, 2012

WEATHER: I really don’t know what to say except to mention what a great pleasure it has been to once again get through the heat and humidity that summer time brings to us here in the southern part of the Baja Peninsula. When our nighttime lows stay in the mid 70′s and the daytime highs stay in the low 90′s it is about as good as it gets, compared to what we had for the past three months. In another few months we will be even cooler as the temperature at night drops to the low 60′s, but this weather I would prefer to have year round! We had very light clouds this week and while the beginning of the week started off a bit windy, by the end of the week we were experiencing just light breezes. The week started with moderate winds from the northwest, picking up in the afternoon, and ended with light breezes from the northeast in the morning, dying to nothing in the afternoon.
WATER: On the Sea of Cortez side of the Cape we had water at 84-85 degrees inside the 1,000 fathom line most of the week, with the exception on Friday when a hot spot of 87 degree water formed across the 1150 to the 95 spot and out to the 1,000 fathom line. For most of the week there was a good temperature break at the 1,000 fathom line as well with the water to the northeast being 2 degrees warmer than the water to the southwest. Surface conditions on the Cortez side were great all week as well with swells at 2-4 feet early in the week and dropping to 1-3 feet later in the week. On the Pacific side we were seeing the water between the San Jaime and the Golden Gate Banks at 84-85 degrees with swells at 3-6 feet early in the week and dropping to 2-4 feet later in the week. In between the Cortez and the Pacific we had a late intrusion of cooler water at 82-83 degrees, coming in to almost three miles of the arch. The water was slightly cleaner on the Pacific side than it was on the Cortez side this week.
BAIT: Same bait report as last week. Sardines could be had here in Cabo this week, probably due to the demand of the tournament boats who use them to catch skip jack and small Yellowfin for bait. A scooped bucket would set you back $25, but they were in much better shape than the Sardines we were getting earlier in the week from bait boats farther north. Caballito and Mullet could be had easily at $3 each, and there were frozen Bally-hoo for $3 each.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Our big money Marlin tournament season is over now that the Bisbee Black and Blue is finished, at least the tournaments for big Marlin. Next week is a small tournament with the Trip Advisor website members, then the W.O.N. Tuna tournament in November. Next year we will see more tournaments that focus on Striped Marlin in the Spring. Statistics can do funny things to your thinking, and as I did last week in the report, this week I am going to lay a few more on you, based on the three day Black and Blue tournament that just finished. There was 106 teams fishing three days for 318 boat days on the water, with big Marlin as the focus. There were 67 billfish caught, 1 Spearfish, 4 Sailfish, 4 Black Marlin, 19 Blue Marlin and 39 Striped Marlin. Based on this, it took 4.75 boat days to get a Marlin this week. Pretty sad stats, and when there was only one Marlin caught over 300 pounds it almost makes me cry. (The team that caught the 2.4 million dollar fish is not crying!) Once again I have to remind you that the stats for normal charters would be much better as the focus for most of the boats in the tournament was big Blue or Black Marlin over 300 pounds, or numbers of smaller sized Blues or Blacks. None of these boats focused on Striped Marlin, which is the most common species here, as evidenced by the comparative number caught during the Tournament. In conclusion, while the possibility of getting a Blue or Black to the boat was fairly small, the chances of hooking into a Striped Marlin, if you focused on that, was fairly good, probably at twice the rate of the Marlin hook-ups experienced by the tournament anglers.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: With the Black and Blue Tournament going on, and since Tuna did not count in any category, the pressure on the Tuna was pretty slack. Not that there were many out there, but those that were caught were pretty decent fish. There were scattered pods of Dolphin to the south 30 miles and to the west the same distance, and some of these pods produced a few Yellowfin to 35 pounds, but once again the focus for big fish was on the Gorda Banks area. Charter boats drifting, slow trolling or flying live bait off of kites were getting the occasional bite from fish that occasionally exceeded 300 pounds (314 for one boat) but most of them were between 100 and 200 pounds. It took a while, you had to have patience. One of our friends worked the area for two days and managed to get a nice 158 pound fish.

DORADO: The Dorado bite experienced a sudden drop this week and I am not sure why. Plenty of charters were working both the inside and the outside area of the Pacific coastline and most were lucky to get three or four fish, there were no really large concentrations found. Boats that did well were ones that were willing to lose their first fish to get more. Leaving that first fish in the water and slow trolling it 30 feet behind the boat until more fish appeared was the trick, and it works much of the time. We had one fly-fishing client this week who did very well, it’s often hard to get enough shots at a fish on the fly rod, but if your target is Dorado, this method as well as heavily chumming with Sardines works very well. On the Cortez side there were Dorado appearing in fair numbers off of the Cabo Del Sol area as tournament boats were heavily chumming the area early in the morning attempting to get those big Skipjack for live bait. With 30 or 40 boats tossing Sardinia in the water the Dorado came in and there were quite a few caught. I didn’t see any really large Dorado come in, or hear of any large ones, most of the fish were between 10 and 15 pounds, but there were a couple of big fish caught by tournament boats, at least I assume they were big as the teams reported the hook-ups on the radio before reporting them as non-qualifying species.
WAHOO: The full moon did produce more Wahoo than were caught last week. During the tournament our team caught a 60 pound fish the first day. While not worth any money in the tournament, it sure was good to eat! Other boats reported hooking up Wahoo as well, and there were a decent number caught by the charter fleet. I did hear of one boat getting two 30 pound fish one day. The action on these fish was scattered and not concentrated in any one area.
INSHORE: The slow down in the Dorado bite had many of the panga anglers crying this week. Last week was absolutely great, but there was a dearth of action off the beach this week. One of the saving graces was that area off of Cabo Real early in the morning as the numbers of white Skipjack and scattered Dorado at least produced action. For the normal inshore species such as Roosterfish, Jacks, Grouper and Snapper, the action was slow as well. Fishing on the Cortez side of the Cape just off the beach produced most of the action as this was the side of the Cape that was holding the Sardinia schools.
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe!
NOTES: In a couple of days I am going to produce a short blog with some number crunching concerning the tournaments we have just had, so check it out. I had a great time fishing this week, just wish our team, “Sporty Game” had gotten our big bite on Thursday hooked up. Oh well, next year! We did get that nice Wahoo as well as a Dorado while bait fishing, so there were fish in the boat, just not the right kind. I would like to thank Mary for keeping the blog updated with the tournament results while I was out fishing, great job honey! Also, a big thank you to Mark Bailey for turning me on to the group “Two Tons of Steel”, this is the first time I had heard of them. Based out of San Antonio, they are described as a “rockabilly” group. However you want to describe them, they are fun to listen to! Until next week, tight lines! Oh, don’t forget that Cabo has changed their time already, last night we set our clock back when we went to sleep. This is one week earlier than in the states, so don’t get confused when you get down here!

Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
October 14-22, 2012

WEATHER: Once again the great weather continues! This week our nighttime lows were in the mid 70′s and the daytime highs stayed in the low 90′s. Combine that with a humidity level that has been in the mid to high 20% range, sunny skies and light breezes and you can understand why this is the perfect time to be here. Not only that, but if you are a fisherman, the action this week, and normally this time of year, has been great!
WATER: On the Pacific side of the Cape this week we had blue water, really blue to the north of the lighthouse and just a slightly off-color blue closer to home, at least late in the week. Very early in the week the water close to home and off of the lighthouse was a dirty green. This was probably due to the large swells produced by the passing of Hurricane Paul. Later in the week the water on the Pacific had swells in the 2-5 foot range with a bit of wind picking up in the afternoons putting some chop on the water within 6 miles of the beach, but it was a bit smoother farther offshore. Water temperatures have been between 81 degrees offshore to the north to 85 degrees 10 miles off the beach inside the San Jaime Bank area. On the Cortez side of the Cape the water has been just a bit off color with an occasional spot of dirty water, but for the most part very fishable. The temperatures have been 85 degrees with a few areas showing as high as 88 degrees. Swells have been small to non-existent at 1-3 feet with no wind within 20 miles of shore.
BAIT: Sardines could be had here in Cabo this week, probably due to the demand of the tournament boats who use them to catch skip jack and small Yellowfin for bait. A scooped bucket would set you back $25, but they were in much better shape than the Sardines we were getting earlier in the week from bait boats farther north. Caballito and Mullet could be had easily at $3 each, and there were frozen Bally-hoo for $3 each.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: I am going to give some data here, then some explanations, so be ready. First off, there were two Billfish tournaments held in Cabo this week, the Los Cabos Billfish Tournament, scheduled for three days but fished only two days due to swells from the passing of Hurricane Paul on Tuesday, the first day scheduled. The second tournament was the Bisbee Los Cabos Offshore Tournament, fished on Saturday and Sunday. This tournament is the reason the report is a day late, I was fishing in it. What we have then are 37 boats fishing the first tournament for two days and 80 boats fishing the second for 2 days, a total of 234 fishing days. During that time frame there were a total of 51 billfish either brought in or released, an average of just under 1 fish for four days of fishing. That’s not a great statistic, especially for an area known as the billfish capital of the world, but here is a quick explanation. Most of the boats fishing these tournaments were fishing for large Marlin. There were three fish weighed in over 300 pounds among the 51 caught, a 483 pound Black Marlin, a 583 and a 565 pound Blue Marlin. 1 Black Marlin, 12 Blue Marlin, 23 Striped Marlin and 13 Sailfish were released. These numbers would have been much higher, if the weights smaller, if the target for the tournaments would have been numbers instead of size. On the boat I fished, we only pulled very large lures for a reason. Elephants eat peanuts, but so do monkeys, and we only wanted elephants, so we did not pull anything a monkey could eat. Many boats did the same thing. So there you go, for a tournament, 1 fish per 4 days is a bit slow here, but the average was higher for regular charters. The catch per unit of effort was about the same for both tournaments, so it appears that the moon phase has not had a great effect so far. That could change for the Black and Blue Tournament coming up this week as the moon will be just before full instead of coming off new phase into the first quarter.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: Yellowfin were the high point of the past week for many boats fishing, both in the tournaments and regular charters. Some stats for you that might make you thing about coming down and entering the Tuna Tournament the first week of November: 4 tournament days of fishing, with very few boats targeting Yellowfin resulted in tuna weighing 247 and 227 in the first tournament, and in the second tournament the top five weighed in were 314, 299, 276, 234 and 218. That’s 7 fish over 200 pounds, a better success ratio by 100% than that of large Marlin. This is not counting the fish that were under 200 pounds! Many of these large fish were caught off of the inner and outer Gorda Banks, an area that has been producing some large fish for the past few weeks. Slow trolling live skip jack and Bolito on the surface or on down-riggers produced the hook-ups. The success rates on the hook-ups is probably higher than normal for a couple of reasons. One is that most of the tuna were caught by boats trying to catch a large Black Marlin, so the gear was much stronger than that used by normal charters, and the fact that most of the baits were fished on very strong flouro-carbon leader, 400 to 500 pound breaking strength. There were Tuna caught in other areas as well, and some of them were very nice sized, with a few in the 100+ class and most in the 25-35 pound class. Boats working the outside of the Cabrillo Seamount, the south side of the San Jaime Bank and the north side of the Golden Gate Bank found dolphin pods that held fish. Some of the dolphin looked like a catch would be guaranteed, dolphin feeding everywhere and hundreds of birds working, only to produce no strikes, but if you kept searching you would find a pod with fish on it eventually. Making a 20 to 30 mile run to get to the fish was the only issue, once out there it was a matter of time for most boats. Small lures, large lures, it didn’t seem to matter, if the fish were hungry they would eat. If not, go find the next school.

DORADO: It might be a tie this week for fish of the week between the excellent Tuna fishing we have been experiencing and the large numbers of Dorado that showed up once again. It did take a couple of days at the start of the week for the fishing to pick back up after the passing of Hurricane Paul, but it did get better. Not all boats were able to get limits but most were able to get enough Dorado to keep anglers happy, then on Friday one boat found a very large dead whale just to the south of the Golden Gate Bank. Mike reported that he saw “thousands” of Dorado around the whale when he arrived, the first boat on the scene. They released all the small ones and kept their limit of fish over 20 pounds, eventually releasing 25 fish that were smaller. Other boats came in on the action and did very well, and on Saturday it was a parking lot, albeit a stinky one if you were downwind, but by the afternoon the bite had died off. Still, most of the boats were able to catch limits of good sized fish for two days. Elsewhere, there was a decent bite along the Pacific shoreline out to two miles from the Los Arcos area to Todo Santos, and a scattering of fish on the Cortez side. The tournaments had Dorado of 54, 45, 42, 41 and 40 pounds as the top 5 fish for the second tournament and 42, 39 and 28 for the first tournament. Imagine the numbers if Dorado had been the target instead of Marlin!
WAHOO: We did not hear of any Wahoo being caught in the tournaments this week, even though there was a category for them in the first tournament. Also, there were none I heard of from the charter fleets, but possibly a few were caught.
INSHORE: Early in the week the large surf conditions from the passing of Hurricane Paul made fishing close to the shore dangerous. Later in the week there were some small Roosterfish as well as some Amberjack caught, and a half-way decent bite on Snapper and Grouper by those fishing the bottom. Most of the Pangas in the early and mid week were fishing just offshore for Dorado. At the end of the week the fishing outside of the Cabo Real area in 200 feet of water turned on for football Yellowfin and large White Skipjack, something for the tournament boats to keep in mind next week!
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe!
NOTES: This report may be a bit longer than normal, but it has been a while since I have had this many days on the water in a row. Being out there makes it so much more detailed, just wish I was fishing myself four or five days a week instead of one or two if I am lucky! Our fingers are crossed for a big fish in the coming Black and Blue tournament, we will be fishing Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If you want to follow the live action you can log onto the Bisbee website and click on “live action”. Hopefully you will see “Sporty Game” on the leader-board! OK, off to post this and then get the lawn cut. My music for this week was “Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears” on their CD “Scandalous” on Lost Highway Records. He sounds like the new James Brown! Thanks for the CD Mark! Until next week, tight lines!

Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
October 8 – 14, 2012

WEATHER: With the early morning lows in the high 70′s and daytime highs reaching the high 90′s it’s plain that our fall weather has arrived. Soon we should be seeing the highs drop to the low 90′s and then we will be in paradise! At this time of the year we still have a slight chance of a bit more bad weather, but our fingers are crossed that Tropical Storm Paul, 665 miles to the south of us continues going to the west and leaves us alone. We had no rain this week in Cabo but there were some scattered showers up in the mountains. With mostly sunny skies we enjoyed the light winds and smooth water.
WATER: Both sides of the Cape had great conditions this week with a bit more of a breeze on the Pacific side, just enough for the most part to keep anglers comfortable and put a light chop on the water in the afternoons. The swells on the Pacific were small at 2-6 feet and spaced well apart. The water was clean and blue compared to the Cortez side of the Cape and the water temperatures averaged a degree cooler at 84-86 degrees with the warmer water laying along the shoreline. On the Cortez side the water was 85-87 degrees with the cooler water toward Cabo San Lucas, and while not as clean as that on the Pacific side, appeared blue. The swells on the Cortez side were small at 2-4 feet. The swells may pick up just a bit later in the week as Tropical Storm Paul may have an effect on their size, but being storm swells they will be spaced well apart.
BAIT: Finally there were some Sardinas available this week since the swell went down, but you had to travel toward San Jose to get them. A scoop would set you back between 25-30 U.S. But they sure came in handy depending on what you were fishing for. Here at home the usual Caballito and Mullet could be had for $3 each, and there were some very large horse bally-hoo at $3 each as well.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Now for the good stuff as far as tournament anglers are concerned. Sorry guys, good news and bad news for you. First the bad news, there have been no large Blue or Black Marlin brought in this week that I have heard of. Maybe that’s good news though, it means that they are still out there! The good news is that there have been plenty of small Blue Marlin caught, and most of them have been released. For anglers that are entering the release categories in the tournaments this is very good news, and for everyone else it is good news as well. In my experience, when you find packs of these small male Blue Marlin there is a big female somewhere in the area. Almost without exception Blue marlin over 300 pounds are female and 100% of the Blue Marlin over 400 pounds are female. The males are like dog heat packs and somewhere in the area there is a big female. I did hear of a big Black Marlin being lost on the Gorda Banks, so there are sure to be plenty of boats working both the inner and outer banks during the tournaments.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: The only large Yellowfin Tuna I have heard of in the past week came from the Gorda Banks area from boats fishing with live baits and chunk baits. There were fish caught every day but there was no real set time for the bite to happen. Many boats spent all morning fishing the area only to leave at 1pm to get home at 3pm and find that the bite started at 2pm. Hey, it’s fishing, that happens often! Many boats went offshore as far as 40 miles looking for schools and they occasionally found one, but the fish were just average size, 10 to 35 pounds, and many pods of porpoise had to be found before finding one that held fish. Unless you were lucky, of course. Closer to home it was nice to find the small football Yellowfin and Bonita showing up on the usual inshore grounds between San Jose and Grey Rock. These Yellowfin were between 10 and 20 pounds and almost the only way to get them to bite was by using Sardinas. The bite was neither steady nor consistent, but many of the boats managed to get four or five Yellowfin in the box for clients. This is great news for the tournament teams as we have had a dearth of these fish in our area, and they are a favorite of teams looking to slow troll on the banks and drop-offs.

DORADO: I have changed the status of the Dorado from fish of the week to fish of the month! While not every boat this week limited out, there were many more that did than did not. Most of our anglers this week had limits of Dorado between 10 and 20 pounds in the boat by 9:30 in the morning, then went out looking for Sailfish, Striped Marlin and Tuna. Most of the Dorado fishing occurred on the Pacific side close to the shore, between the lighthouse and inside the Golden Gate Bank, working outside of that area produced fewer fish, but on the average they were larger, some going as high as 50 pounds. Rigged bally-hoo were the best bait overall, and bright lures trolled at fairly high speeds of 9-10 knots did the trick as well.
WAHOO: Wahoo continued to show up in the catch of many of the boats this week, but on average they were not large fish like we see in the spring. In fact, there were quite a few of what I call Wee-Hoo, fish in the 3-5 pound class caught. Almost all the fish were found close to the beach by boats working for Dorado, at least those that were found on the Pacific side. On the Cortez side quite a few were hooked by boats drifting bait or chunks for Yellowfin Tuna on the Gorda Banks or the mounts farther to the north.
INSHORE: In a repeat of last week, there were scattered Roosterfish in the areas beaches, both on the Pacific side and the Sea of Cortez, but most of the pangas were working just off the beach on the Pacific side for Dorado first, then checking in the surf zone for Snapper and Roosterfish. If anglers wanted Yellowfin a choice had to be made between the Pacific and the Cortez side, as all the Yellowfin were on the Cortex side. Boats that did focus on the inshore fish reported few bottom fish to be found.
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe!
NOTES: My music choice for this week was a girl my wife heard sing jazz at a firefighters fundraiser. She was so impressed she bought me the CD, and I like it so much I am sharing it with you. Her name is Divier Guive, the CD is self titled and produced here in Cabo at “Home Studio”. If you want a chance to check her out, go to http://www.reverbnation/divierguive and click on the song Humo azul. By the way, Brian Flynn is here for just a few weeks more before he goes on hid European tour, so if you are here and want to hear him and Mauricio play, get in while the getting is good. Check him out at his site http://www.brianflynnband. Tournament season is here and coming up in the next several weeks are the Los Cabo Offshore Tournament and the Bisbee Black and Blue Tournament. I will be fishing both so please, keep you fingers crossed for my team, “Sporty Game”! Until next week, tight lines!

Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
Sept 24 – 30, 2012

WEATHER: We are starting into the season of change, but while during this weekend we felt the temperature drop a few degrees, we still have a few weeks to go. As proof that storm season is not over yet, this week we had two systems that affected our area. The first was the passing of Miriam well to the west of us, the closest we came was 400 miles, but we did get some clouds and a bit of scattered rain, as well as some huge swells. As soon as Miriam had passed and was to the north, another system started up to the south of us. When initially seen this system appeared organized but had not been given a name or number. It covered approximately 350 miles north to south and was extremely heavy with rain, and we all took a deep breath and crossed our fingers. Eventually named Norman after it came along our side, it was very fast moving and too a sharp bend to the east so all we received was the moisture from the northernmost banding, but that was enough to drop up to 3 inches of water on us in 2 days. Our already soaked soil had a bit of a job trying to absorb this new onslaught so the run-off was heavy and once again the streets were not looking pretty after it passed. If this system had gone over the top of us there may have been some severe water damage to the area, but we got lucky. At the start of the week we were seeing the daytime highs in the high 90′s and nighttime lows in the low 80′s. At the end of the week both temperatures had dropped by 5 degrees. It sure feels nice now, but who know how long that will last! Most years you can almost set your clock by the weather change right October 15 so we may still have a few weeks before the change is permanent.
WATER: The passing of Hurricane Miriam to the west brought us large swells, large enough that the Port Captain decided to close the port on Tuesday. It looked decent out there to us, just large, long period swells, but for safety he closed it. On Wednesday it re-opened and there were still large swells but also heavy rains and wind, maybe the decision was made a day early, but that is the way it goes. With the approach of Tropical Storm Norman he once again closed the port on Friday, and for good reason this time. Heavy winds and lots of rain would have made fishing a bit dicey. With the cloud cover from these systems over our area it was difficult to get a good satellite shot but at the end of the week there was enough o get an idea. On the Pacific side of the Cape the water was 83-84 degrees from the beach to the banks and 82-83 degrees on the banks. Due south of the Cape we had 84=85 degree water while west of us it appeared an even 86 degrees. The main difference was the color of the water, mostly due to run-off from the heavy rain at the end of the week. Along the coast on the Cortez side of the Cape the water was green and dirty out to 8 miles, and extremely dirty within the first mile of the beach. On the Pacific side the water near the beach was still very dirty out at least one to two miles, but past there it cleaned up great. There were large swells on both sides of the Cape early in the week and these later tapered off greatly so that at the end of the week we were seeing only 5-8 foot swells with some winds to 12 knots on them.
BAIT: Live bait was a bit scarce this week due to water conditions but what could be found was Caballito and Mullet at the normal $3 each as well as some frozen Ballyhoo at $3 each as well.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Overall, the fishing appeared much better early in the week than late in the week, but on Saturday there was a Blue Marlin brought in that was reported to weigh in the region of 730 pounds. I did not see the fish nor did I get information on the who, what when where or how, but as soon as I do I will get it out on the blog. Early in the week there were decent numbers of Striped Marlin as well as Sailfish and we had one group fishing who caught small Blue Marlin (about 180 pounds each) two days in a row. The last day of the week for my report, Saturday, had slow Bill fishing results for us with just one Sailfish coming into the pattern for three boats, and one large hook being straightened out by an unidentified very large fish. As soon as the water cleans up things should get better as early in the week most of the billfish action took place pretty close to shore on the Pacific side.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: Once again early in the week was better fishing as most boats were coming in with limits of Yellowfin that ranged from 12 to 30 pounds with a few to 80 pounds in the mix. Most of the small fish were found close to the beach, sometimes in the open and not associated with and Dolphin. Most of the larger fish were found farther offshore and were under Dolphin. In both instances the best bites were had on small lures from 3-5 inches in length and pink in color. Most likely the reason was the number of squid in the water, almost every fish we caught was choked with squid this size, so it made perfect sense to “match the hatch”. The largest fish of all were caught by boats that were flying a kite to get the lures away from the boat and in clean water.

DORADO: While the Tuna fishing at the beginning of the week was impressive, Dorado regained their title of fish of the week as I do not think there was a boat our there that did not have a chance to come in with limits, and most of the fish found were good size at 12-25 pounds. A few larger fish snuck in as I did see one at least 50 pound fish brought to the dock and there were others in the 30-40 pound class as well. Early in the week the water close to the beach on the Pacific side held most of the fish for us but at the end of the week everything had changed due to the run-off from the storm. The bite dropped off severely on Saturday, the best result I saw was three fish of about 15 pounds each. With Miriam dropping good amounts of water to the north of us it might suddenly switch right back on as we get floating debris that is washed out of the arroyos coming into our area. If this happens, and the water has a chance to clean up the fishing might just be fantastic.
WAHOO: Full moon was the 28th so we expected good results on Wahoo, and considering the number of days that there were to fish and the condition of the water the results were pretty darn good. Most of our clients had a shot at least, but with Wahoo you can never be sure, baits chopped in half, lure skirts sliced and mono-filament leader cut as if with a knife were the most common signs we saw of the presence of these fish. We did have one client that managed two Wahoo of about 40 pounds on two separate days, and he was fishing rigged ballyhoo on circle hooks. The leader was frayed but the hook lodged in the corner of the Wahoos mouth and they were able to bring the fish to the boat without getting cut off.
INSHORE: Strong currents and dirty water once again had an effect on the inshore bottom action and the numbers of Roosterfish available had dropped off. Many if not most of the Pangas were working just off the beach for Dorado and a few ventured offshore for Tuna and Marlin once the winds had died down.
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe!
NOTES: OK, my music of the week was Professor Longhair on his CD “New Orleans Piano”, a 1989 Atlantic records release. Brought to me by our friend Ed, this is the best piano music I have listened to in a very long time. My favorite cut is #14, “Longhair’s Blues-Rhumba”, talk about getting you moving your feet, wow! Hopefully we have good weather this week and the fishing returns to what it was before this last storm came through. I would also like to thank everyone who let me know that someone else based in Cabo is using my format, I already knew, and it is a bit of a compliment, just as long as they don’t plagiarize, what’s there to do about it. Until next week, tight lines!

Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
July 23-29, 2012

WEATHER: It’s Sunday afternoon and I am a bit late in getting the report written for this week as I was fishing, or at least out on the water, this morning. The last thing I wanted to do was spend time in the engine room working on the water pump for the generator, but at least it was early in the day and I did not have to deal with 112 degrees in the open sun in the parking lot that my wife experienced at 2 in the afternoon! This morning the high, or should I say low, for the morning was a balmy 84 degrees, and you saw what I just wrote as far as how high the temperature rose. The humidity has not been too bad, and we have had some cloud cover for most mornings this week, but it sure burned off by mid-day. No rain this week, as expected, but I thought I saw some clouds dropping a bit up in the mountains towards the East Cape on Saturday. We did experience some wind from the north-west during the middle of the week but it was experienced out on the water, not here in town.
WATER: I don’t think I have seen better conditions on the Cortez side of the Cape since last summer, swells a 1-3 feet, little wind if any with a few short period exceptions and the water has been an average of 86 degrees in our area, a bit warmer up toward the East Cape. On the Pacific side it has been a bit of a different story however. The water temperature and clarity has been fluctuating a lot, mostly due to the currents. There has been an area of cool, 75 degree water showing up between the beach inside the Golden Gate Bank and extending to the southeast, sometimes wrapping around to the 95 spot. Not only cool, it has also been green, sometimes dirty green but mostly a clean green color. It has extended offshore as far as across the San Jaime Banks and running down along the 1,000 fathom line. Localized wind have made this area a bit uncomfortable to fish, choppy and cold when going out another 12 miles often ends up being much more comfortable and with better water to fish in. That being said, look down farther in the report to see what has been in this water.
BAIT: Caballito and Mullet were available at the normal $3 per bait and you could get them if you were out early, many boats were unable to get bait and had to settle for frozen horse ballyhoo at $3 each.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Locally we had pretty decent Marlin fishing, however up in the area of the East Cape the fishing was a bit different. We would have thought that with the warmer, bluer water up there that the 61 boats fishing the 3 day tournament would have produced a few more fish. After all that is 183 fishing days. Unfortunately there were no fish brought in that qualified for the 300 pound minimum weight. There were several underweight fish brought in and the results of the tournament were 48 Striped Marlin, 29 Blue Marlin, 1 Black Marlin and 14 Sailfish for an average of 1.5 billfish per team. The day prior to the tournament starting, here in Cabo a Blue Marlin weighing over 700 pounds was brought in to the scales, and the day after the tournament a nice Black Marlin estimated at 550 pounds (by a Captain who knows his fish) was caught on live bait. I also heard one Captain (who may have been telling fish stories on the radio) say that he had hooked for a very short time (one jump to be exact) a Blue Marlin on a blind strike that was estimated at being near 1,000 pounds. I fished three days locally on the Sea of Cortez side and only managed to get one Sailfish up into the lures, but had clients who did much better than that. On the Pacific side there were Blue Marlin being found offshore in the blue water and Striped Marlin being found in the cooler green water next to the beach.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: While I did not hear of any large Tuna being caught near home this week, there were several very nice fish, two over 200 pound and one over 100 pounds caught during the East Cape Bisbee tournament. There were large fish reported at the Inman bank just of the north of Punta Gorda, but they were very finicky and rarely came up except after most of the boats were gone in the afternoons. Slow trolled live Bolito hooked a few of these cows. Near to home it was a matter of finding the right pod of Dolphin to fish, with the Spotted Dolphin and the White Bellied Dolphin holding Yellowfin to 40 pounds with most of the fish in the 15-20 pound class. A great catch for most of the boats was a limit of five Tuna per angler, but it was great because few boats were able to manage that! Instead, the average catch was two to three fish per angler with at least on of them going 30 pounds. The area offshore on the Pacific side from just inside the San Jaime Bank to 10 miles to the west of there produced most of these fish.
DORADO: Once again I saw a lot of small Dorado this week, and we released a few ourselves! Near the beach they were quite common, at least on the Pacific side. In the area of San Jose they could be found close to the beach as well. For larger fish the area offshore in the warmer water on the Pacific seemed to produce a few fish to 35 pounds, we had clients who managed to get a couple of these fish each day as well as some of the smaller ones. Up at the East Cape Tournament there were a few very nice Dorado brought in, the largest was 57 pounds and there were 13 total over 30 pounds.
WAHOO: I know the Wahoo bite was decent this week because even I was able to catch one! Heck, I used to catch these guys for a living commercially when I lived in Guam, but I have a hard time figuring them out here. My fish was a triple strike with just one hooking up, and it was out in the open water with no structure near. Other fish were caught in the fifty fathom flats off of Punta Gorda as well as out in the open warm water on the Pacific side. I didn’t hear of any really large fish this week, ours was about 25 pounds and that sounded about average.
INSHORE: Amberjack, Roosterfish and a few Grouper were pretty much the inshore action this week. For anglers fishing fly gear or light tackle there was a good bite on nice sized Skipjack as well.
FISH RECIPE: Check the blog for this weeks recipe!
NOTES: Music of the week: Rascal Flatts and a bit of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, not bad fishing music! Oh and toss in some Oak Ridge Boys as well. Country kind of week for me! I hope the fishing stays good and I really hope that y’all get a chance to come and try it! Until next week, tight lines!

Bisbee East Cape Tournament results, Day 1

With 61 teams compeating in this three day tournament, there were 32 Billfish caught on this, the first day. There were 9 Blue Marlin caught and two of them were brought to the weigh station. With the minimum qualifying weight at 300 pounds, bringing in an underweight fish would result in a penalty of -25 points and -2 points per pound for each pound under the 300 minimum. Team Anzuelo had a negative 207 points for their fish and team Shazam had a negative 133 points. There were 13 Striped marlin released and 10 Pacific Sailfish released as well. There is a largest Dorado and largest Tuna catagory as well with a 30 pound minimum. There were no qualifing Tuna weighed but there were 5 dorado that made the cut. The largest for the day was 40.10 pounds caught by team Tiger Spirit. In the release catagory there are 8 teams tied for first place with 300 points. Blue and Black Marlin are worth 300 release points while Striped Marlin and Sailfish are worth 100 release points. Several fish were reported as hooked up that were lost after lengthy fights, lets see if the teams can keep them on the line tomorrow!

East Cape Bisbee Tournament

Starting this morning at the Buena Vista Resort. There are three days of fishing and 61 boats entered into the tournament. the base entry fee is only $1,200 but if you were into all the Jackpots it would coat $13,800. Not bad considering the possibility of winning a part of, or all of the $450,000 up for grabs! I’ll give an update later at the end of the day on the first day’s results. I was hoping to be up there fishing myself on the “Sporty Game” but the timing was wrong, so you know who I’ll be rooting for! Go Dan and Steve!

Cabo Fish Report

FLY HOOKER SPORTFISHING
Captain George Landrum
gmlandrum@hotmail.com
http://www.flyhooker.com

http://captgeo.wordpress.com/

Cabo Fish Report
December 5-11, 2011

WEATHER: The closer we get to Christmas the cooler we seem to get. Our low for the week was 61 degrees in the early morning, enough to make us wear light jackets to the Marina in the morning! I know, I know, but when you have lived in the warm stuff as long as we have you get acclimated and when it drops into the low 60′s it’s COLD! Later in the week clouds moved in and it warmed up 10 degrees as the heat was trapped. Our daytime highs have been in the mid 80′s, just about perfect as far as I am concerned. Early in the week we had mostly sunny skies. Early Saturday morning it was cloudy, a solid layer over us so we missed the lunar eclipse.
WATER: Surface conditions this week on both sides of the Cape were very good with only slight swells on the Cortez side and swells at 3-5 feet on the Pacific side. The Pacific side did experience a bit of chop in the afternoons as the wind seemed to start picking up around 10AM. Just as our air temperatures seem to drop as we get toward Christmas, so do the water temperatures. The water just off the tip of the Cape seems to be 77-78 degrees and extend all across our fishing area from Los Frailles up to Todo Santos out a distance of 20 miles. Outside of that area it drops a bit to about 75 degrees. That is the way it was at the end of the week at least. We started the week with a band of cooler water (75 degrees) running along the beach on the Pacific side, it extended out about 2 miles. This cool water had disappeared by the end of the week.
BAIT: It was a hit or miss approach this week when it came to getting bait. There were not many days when you could get a good quality live bait, there was a lot of junk showing up from the bait boats. If you were early, lucky and had a captain and deckhand with good eyes it was possible to get some decent Caballito at the usual $3 per bait. There were some mullet and a few, very few, Mackerel available, also at $3 per bait. Sardinas were also there at $25-$30 a scoop depending on the supplier. A few of the bait boats had thawed horse Ballyhoo at $3-$4 per bait as well.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: We keep waiting for the hoards of Striped Marlin to come down to us but there has not been a strong showing in our area as of this date. A few boats that have gone a bit farther up the line have encountered decent concentrations and have done well, but the distances involved right now put these fish out of reach of the daily charter trips. Hopefully as the water continues to cool the fish will come our way. For the moment we have to be content with an average of one to two Striped Marlin per trip for the boats that concentrate on them. The best results this week have come on trolled Ballyhoo and good live bait tossed in front of tailing fish. Almost all the action has happened on the Pacific side, but it has been a bit spread out. A few boats on half day trips have been lucky and found fish just off the lighthouse, but others have blanked in the same area. Some boats have found three or four fish to release up to the north past the Golden Gate Banks and others in the same area have nor seen a fish, so you can see that there is a lot of luck involved right now. We hope the concentrations arrive soon, it sure would be nice to be seeing double digit releases every day!
YELLOWFIN TUNA: There are still large fish out there as several boats have proven this week, it’s just that you have to find which tree they are hiding behind. Get it? There is not any kind of pattern to these larger Yellowfin with the exception of the Gorda Banks, and there it has been a matter of putting in the time with the right bait and terminal gear. Offshore it has been a matter of finding the right pod of porpoise to work. There are plenty of pods out there but not all of them hold Tuna, and not all of those have large fish, and those that do have large fish often have fish that will just wave their fins at you and smirk. You like being frustrated? Try fishing just for large Tuna and you will be happy. There have been plenty of the small variety out thee but once again it has been a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Some boats are coming in with one or two footballs, others with five or six and once in a while a boat will have several larger #30-#40 fish aboard. The large fish, those over #100 pounds, have been there as well, but as I said they have been spread out. These larger fish have been coming in from boats using kites for the most part,but a few of them have been caught on trolled lures.
DORADO: Still the mainstay of the fleet boats, they are beginning to make themselves a bit more scarce. While several weeks ago it was common to come in with a near-limit load of fish, this week most of the boats have been lucky to get two or three fish and some have actually caught none at all. I think it is a matter of the water cooling off, but then I have to blame it on something! The boats that have done the best have been leaving the first fish hooked up in the water and dropped bait behind the boat, using the first fish as a teaser to bring in more Dorado. This method has worked well, but you always run the risk of loosing that first fish as a few anglers have found out! The best fishing for Dorado has still been on the Pacific side close to the beach.
WAHOO: There was actually a pretty decent Wahoo bite this week as we had the full moon at the end of the week. A lot of these were very small fish, I saw one come off a boat that I first mistook for a Sierra, was it not for the strong bars on the side I would have not known it was a Wahoo, perhaps it would have pushed the scale to 4 pounds, Sad, but there you go. Most of the fish that were caught were larger than that, averaging 25 pounds but even though there were more this week, they still were not common. The best areas were on top of the Gorda Banks and along the rocky points on the Pacific coast. A fair number were found offshore under the shark floats.
INSHORE: Inshore fishing at the beginning of the week was pretty good with a great showing of Sierra up off the beach at Migrineo, some good Snapper fishing among the rocks on the Pacific side as well as a few scattered small Roosterfish and a lot of Pompano. This was when we had that band of cool water running along the beach on the Pacific side. Mid-week things turned around for several days as the water switched, warmed a bit and became gin-clear along the shoreline and very few fish were caught. At the end of the week it has settled down again and while there were still no Sierra, the Snapper and Pompano had begin to bite again. The largest number of fish caught though seemed to be the Mexican Marlin (also know as needle-fish).
FISH RECIPE: posted on the blog Thursday or Friday. We have been really busy the past several weeks and promise to get a new one up this week! Really!
NOTES: Once again we experienced near perfect weather and very good fishing. The whales have started to put on the shows we love and the water has been in great shape. Christmas is coming up and maybe if you have been god this year, Santa will give you a trip to Cabo for a present! This weeks report was written to a mix of Texas rock-a-billy music, courtesy of my friend Mark Bailey. Oh, that’s right, delivered to me by Mark and recorded by his son Alan! Thanks guys! Until next week, tight lines!