Numbers at a glance: Billfish 10%, Tuna 73%, Dorado 14%
BILLFISH: Marlin catches were painfully slow this week, as the moon waxed beautiful, illuminating the night sky and giving the fish an opportunity to feed at night and not bother with the bait offered by fishermen in the daylight hours. In fact very few were spotted. Highlight of the week was when the King of Sweden, on an unofficial visit to meet with scientists and fishery experts, did extremely well to release a nice striped marlin and a mako shark from a panga, on what was a tough day. Pisces crews worked hard and did manage to find a few marlin for our anglers though with live bait, either caballito or mackerel doing the trick. Just one marlin was caught on a Petrolero lure (brown/gray/orange) aboard Pisces Valerie on January 23rd at Las Margaritas-Los Arcos for Mike Lenz, Bob Downport, Bill Muller and Will Rigsby visiting from Idaho. Pisces 31ft Bertram “Tiburon” released another Striped Marlin twenty six miles out from the Old Lighthouse for Sean Caroline´s group visiting from Savage, Minnesota. Anglers Jessica & Brian Cyphers from Folsom, California opted for a 25ft panga, Pichurro which was within their budget a good decision as they were able to catch a striped marlin at the Old Lighthouse. “Andrea” a 28ft Uniflite released a 110 lbs. Marlin just outside of the Golden Gate on the Pacific for Bud & Karen Cross from Fort Collins, Colorado and finally Pisces “Rebecca” 31ft Bertram released another one yesterday, the complete opposite direction off of San Jose del Cabo for Clayton, Robert Greathouse & James and Christopher Cornelius from Metairie, Louisiana. The outlook is for the marlin bite to increase as the moon gets smaller and we will probably start seeing fish show up on the Cortez side also. Pisces anglers released a total of five Striped Marlin this week.
OTHER SPECIES: The main catch this week is the unstoppable yellow fin tuna being, happy anglers with fresh sashimi food! Football sizes from 10, 15, 20 and 25 lbs. and vessels going from twenty to thirty miles off over the Pacific side - long days on less than smooth seas. Pisces “Andrea” 28ft caught eight tunas and one Dorado for Michael and Leah Keller from Mandan, North Dakota. Pisces “Rebecca” 31ft brought twenty one tunas outside the Golden Gate for Dale, Tim, Matt & Brandon Quirk, Dean Newman, Charlie Hand visiting all from North Carolina. Pisces 31ft “Tracy Ann" caught thirty one tunas, released ten outside on Jaime bank. Pisces 35ft “Valerie” did great for Brian Nixon group our local friend and reeled twenty two tunas at the Golden as well. Pisces 31ft “La Brisa” on January 27th put reel action with ten tunas and a Dorado outside of Cerritos for Sean Miles, Scott Key, John Miller, Seth & Natalia Sanford and Reece Finlayson visiting from Miami, Florida and Australia. Bill Collector 32ft Pisces brought six tunas from 20 to 45 lbs. outside of La Herradura for Kari Lehtonen and Cody Eakin from Dallas, Texas and “Shambala” 60ft Pisces got thirty tunas outside of Punta Lobos for Frank Adler, Gary McArdell, Ken Gould, Travis Haining, Matt Kinley and Kevin Thomas from California. Pisces 31ft “Tiburon” got a 25 pounder dorado outside of the old light house for Darrel Kvasager, David & Mark Hoiland from Minnetonka, Minnesota. Seventy three percent of our charters brought yellow fin tunas and fourteen percent of our charters caught dorado, which consisted of 490 tunas and 9 dorados. Limits were kept on all fish with the remainder released.
LOCATION: Golden Gate, Punta Pescadero, Punta Lobos, San Jaime, Margaritas
WEATHER: Clear Skies, little windy over the Sea of Cortes
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 75F
BEST LURES: Cedar plugs and feathers for tuna, Live Bait: Caballito, Mackerel for Striped Marlin
Based on the catches of Pisces Sportfishing by Ady Moya.
