Releasing Dominates Catching

[bajafly]

Endless Season Update 08/1/2009
REPORT #1176 "Below the Border" Saltwater Fly-Fishing reports since 1996
East Cape

The first of the week began with great weather and enough blue marlin biting to raise the expectations for the East Cape Bisbee tournament. However, by mid-week, snotty seas whipped up by an unseasonal south wind that also cooled the water surface temperature three to five degrees.
Fifty-four boats lined up for the shotgun start the first day. During the three day event Tournament control was kept busy fielding a steady stream of radio reports of hookups and releases of both blue and striped marlin, along with a few reports of quality sized dorado. Lacking was the number of blues that would exceed the qualifying 300 pound minimum. By the end of the third day, only two qualifying blues were brought to the scales at Hotel Buenavista Beach Resort. The largest, weighing 341 pounds, was caught by Kent Andersson on the Cap'n Jake and the other 310 pounder was caught by Keith Jones fishing on the Mi Corazon. In the dorado category, the winning fish was a respectable 57.2 pounds caught by Alfredo Lucero on Sails Call. There was also a yellowfin tuna class and Daniel Fisher on the Fisherman delivered a 174.4 pound tuna to the scale.
Meanwhile, for the non tournament anglers, the inshore and the beach remained the best bet. Deeper in the water column there were amberjack and pargo. Along the beaches was a mixed bag of small roosters, green jacks, pompano and Mexican lookdowns.
Current East Cape Weather [url "http://tiny.cc/EastCapeWeather303"]http://tiny.cc/EastCapeWeather303[/url]
Magdalena Bay, Baja Mexico
First timers Charlie Delorme and his family discovered how hard yellowfin tuna pulled and were exhausted by the time they limited out. The fish were close enough, inside of ten miles, so the trip was more huff and puff than boat riding. There were also some just under a 100 pound grouper hanging on the rock reefs a few miles outside the Boca much to the delight of John Yancy and friends.
After their success they decided to chase a rumor that the commercial pangas had found a wad of wahoo farther offshore. They had a nice ride on the early morning calm seas but never did find the wahoo. With the afternoon wind at their back, it was a quick ride back.
Boats fishing outside of Cabo San Lazaro are reporting some chunky white sea bass up to 50 pounds along with some 20 pound yellows. Farther offshore up toward Thetis the shark buoys are loaded with both dorado and YFT’s.
Inside the bay, sierra have exploded with a few fatties to 8 pounds in the mix. Kayaker Ricky Garcia reported limiting out each of the four days he fished. His catch included sierra, corvina, grouper and bay bass.
Bob Hoyt
Current Magdalena Bay Weather [url "http://tiny.cc/MagBayWeather150"]http://tiny.cc/MagBayWeather150[/url]
Zihuatanejo, Mainland Mexico
No Report Computer Crashed!
Ed Kunze
Current Zihuatanejo Weather http://tiny.cc/zihuatanejo582

Cabo San Lucas
Black and Blue Marlin along with a fair showing of Striped Marlin and the occasional pack of Sailfish continued to bite this week. I know of one Captain who caught a small 5 pound Dorado, rigged it as a live bait off the outrigger and hooked up to a 600+ Black Marlin less than 10 minutes later. After 2 hours of fighting the fish, with lots of video, it was released at the boat. Another boat, one of the big fleet boats, brought in a 400-pound Black to be weighed. There were quite a few more caught and released that were smaller. The Blue Marlin showed up as well with fish that occasionally topped the 400-pound class being released by private boats and a few in that size being caught by fleet boats. Sailfish were showing again this week with the concentration (or at least what we get as a concentration) occurring within 5 miles of the beach on the Cortez side. The Striped Marlin were found about the same distance off the beach up on the inside of the Golden Gate Bank.
It is nice to see the Tuna continue to show up, and occasionally a large one hits the deck. Up at the East Cape Bisbee Tournament the top fish was right at 150 pounds and we had fish here that would have matched that. Of course most of the fish were smaller! We had one client who did well with one Yellowfin at #60, three at #35 and one football and he was back by 11:30 with more than enough fish, having reached his limit on Yellowfin anyway.
The Dorado numbers were still down this week, a few boats were getting a few fish but most of them were happy to come across one and get it to the boat.
Small Dorado, an occasional large Roosterfish and plenty of small grouper and snapper had the anglers fishing off of Pangas happy this week. With the rough water mid-week the later part of the week saw most of the boats working the water around 200 to 300 feet deep, staying away from the churned up beachside.
George & Mary Landrum
Current Cabo Weather [url "http://tiny.cc/cabo191"]http://tiny.cc/cabo191[/url]
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