WEATHER: We had just another week in paradise with our daytime highs varying between 90-95 early in the week and 85-90 later in the week. Our nighttime lows varied as well with 75 early in the week and 65 later in the week. That nighttime low of 75 on Monday and Tuesday night forced us to turn on the air conditioner! We had partly cloudy skies all week long with winds at 10-15 knots from the northwest with occasional higher gusts.
WATER: There was little change in the surface conditions from last week. The Pacific side of the Cape had swells at 3-5 feet and the Cortez side had 1-3 foot swells. The water temperature on the Cortez side was a pretty even 74-76 degrees from the shore out to around 12 miles, then it became 67-69 degrees for another 12-20miles, then there was a pretty strong break where it warmed right back up. On the Pacific side the temperature remained around 66-69 degrees. On the Pacific side from the Golden Gate and across the San Jaime Bank and toward the beach the water was a fairly dirty green, the closer to shore you got the dirtier it got. This plume of cool, green water extended to the south of the Cape keeping the water outside the 1,000-fathom line that dirty green.
BAIT: There was plenty of bait this week as the larger boat brought in plenty of Mackerel to sell to the Panga bait boats. With the small moon the bait boats were able to catch plenty of Caballito as well. This week the bait was the usual $2 per bait. When we purchased bait on Saturday, our supplier informed us that as of this coming Wednesday all the boats were raising their prices to $3 per bait. Keep in mind there has not been a raise in the bait price for almost 8 years, so this is not unexpected.
FISHING:
BILLFISH: Once again the billfish were very easy to find this week, all you had to do was get out on the water. From just off of the lighthouse on the Pacific side around the Cape to the Punta Gorda area they were everywhere. Early in the week they were on the surface sleeping and tailing. Unfortunately, they were also full! They may have been stuffing themselves on squid once again, but for whatever the reason, you could throw baits to 25-30 fish and be lucky to find one or two that were hungry. A few boats resorted to drifting live baits deep, and this technique did work a little better than trolling lures while casting bait to fish on the surface. As the week went on the fish seemed to move up the Cortez coast just a bit and then back to in front of the arch. At the end of the week the ratio of fish baited and fish hooked improved a bit and most boats that tried to work Marlin were able to catch between two and four per trip, definitely an improvement over earlier in the week. Mackerel was the bait of choice; Caballito just didn’t seem to get the fish interested. The Striped Marlin averaged around 120 pounds.
YELLOWFIN TUNA: At the beginning of this week all the purse seiners we had out front last week had gone north, leaving us with just “scales drifting down” where before we had great fishing. Of course the fish were not around, they had all moved out or had been scooped up in the nets! Well, on the positive side, on Saturday this week the fish re-appeared just two miles out off the arch and lighthouse. These fish were also a bit larger with most of them between 20-30 pounds with a few pushing 40 pounds. One hour in the fish resulted in 16 Yellowfin for one of our groups of anglers. Almost anything worked, as these fish were very hungry. I went up on the Cortez side on Saturday and we got into a very larges group of dolphin with birds everywhere and large schools of bait showing up on the depth sounder. No Yellowfin though, and I could see two super seiners just on the horizon to the north, off of Los Frailles. I wonder if they had already gotten all the fish?
