DAY TWO ACTION IN THE TUNA TOURNAMENT

Pisces Andrea in lead at 15th annual Tuna Tournament....with a 172.6 LB tuna caught by Keith Gelfand from Richmond, Texas. First time in the tournament - their fish was caught outside San Jaime on a petrolero lure. They also released a 400 LB blue marlin on the same rod, reel & lure shortly before they hooked the tuna.

DAY ONE RESULTS OF THE TUNA TOURNAMENT

BIGGEST FISH OF THE DAY, THOUGH NOT THE BIGGEST MONEY WINNER FOR DAY ONE.

Leader in Day One Tuna Jackpot is a 147.8 LBS tuna caught by the Reel Medicine, this fish however, is not entered in the jackpots only the straight tournament entry. El Diablo, weighed in a 131.9 LBS tuna which makes them the winner in the ...5K, 1K & 2K daily jackpots, however team Fat Farmers will take more money for their 85.7 LB tuna as they had the biggest fish in the 3K, 5K & 10K pots. Irish Goodbye had been in the lead with their 123.10 LB fish the first 100 LB plus fish to the scale today, but they were displaced by the Diablo fish. Largest wahoo today was 52.6 LBS aboard Koi Sushi which should earn them around $47,000. Biggest fish of the day is pictured here. Today there were five qualifying tuna and two qualifying wahoo.

TUNA TOURNAMENT GETS UNDERWAY

W.O.N Tuna Jackpot Tuna Tournament kicked off today with 135 boats participating -as always the tournament is already fun. For the first time in the tournament's history boats took off under cloudy and slightly rainy skies. One boat came in around 10.30 am, as they didn't read the rules about the scale not opening until 2.00 pm. We went ahead and weighed it for them on our Pisces scale and it came up slightly short at 25 LBS, if it had gone over 30 LBS, it could have potentially been worth $46,000.00 - but let's wait and see what comes in later today.

WEEKLY FISH REPORT

OCTOBER 26TH TO NOVEMBER 1ST, 2013
Overall Catch Success Rate All Species Combined 96%
Numbers at a glance: Billfish 68%, Tuna 34%, Dorado 70%

BILLFISH: Weather remains warm in Cabo which accounts for blue marlin catches that continued throughout this past week, whilst at the same time we saw an increase on striped marlin caches, with a few sailfish thrown into the mix.  Pisces Cabolero, a 31 ft. Cabo, had a an outstanding da for David Wisniewski & Ken Neighring  from Place Pella,  Iowa on October 28th, when they were fishing  twenty two miles from the Old Lighthouse – they released two blue marlin estimated at 300 and 260 LBS respectively; both took lures.  Paul Linden out on Pisces Attitude Adjustment released a blue marlin in the same area, also on a lure.  The last day of October Pisces Rebecca had a fantastic day with a blue & striped marlin released a 40 LB wahoo and a dorado for John & Rich Dibenadeto & Howard King from Maine. October 31st was one of the best days this report;  La Brisa released three striped marlin and caught four dorado and two skipjacks for Doug Rubino from Houston, Texas.  Valerie this day and anglers from South Africa who did will to have a striped marlin triple header.  Tracy Ann & Bill Collector also had triple striped marlin days with some dorado and tuna the same day.  Average catches on striped marlin was one or two fish and occasionally up to three; these numbers should start to climb as we transition towards winter.   The majority of the catches were on the Pacific side, the stripers & sailfish preferred bait, whereas all the blue marlin were caught on lures. Sixty eight percent of our boats caught billfish, giving us a total catch of 73: Striped marlin 67, blue marlin 4, and sailfish 2.

OTHER SPECIES:  Dorado remained the top catch, though the sheer numbers have dropped to catches mostly in single digits.  In previous weeks it had been common to see catches of twenty plus fish, but this week the most anybody caught was twelve. Sizes were on the small side at 12 to 25 LBS with catches on the Pacific.   Seventy percent of our charters caught dorado giving us a total of 233 fish. Yellow fin tuna catches picked up with lots of school size fish, though none of the bigger ones were caught; hopefully they are keeping a low profile until the tournament next week.  Top boat was Andrea with twenty seven in a day 25 miles out for John Hopkins from San Antonio. Catches ranged from one to twenty plus fish, with the faithful cedar plug the most effective way of catching fish in the 15 to 25 lb. class.  Thirty four percent of boats caught tuna, giving us a total count of 236 fish. The only other catches were a few 30-40 lb. wahoo and the odd skipjack.
LOCATION: Pacific, Lighthouse, Gaspareno San Cristobal up as far to Golden Gate – Cortez, Cabeza de Ballena.
WEATHER CONDTIONS: Sunny and hot, seas calm with some chop in the afternoons.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 82 F
BEST LURES: live caballito, cedar plugs, petrolero, red/black, green

Countdown Begins for Tuna Tournament

 

 

Hoping for lots of these next week, for the WON Jackpot Tuna Tournament to be held Thursday & Friday - this one was caught aboard Pisces Speedwell by John Whittle from Houston and weighed 148 LBS, he would be smiling even more if it was a week later.

PLEASE NOTE, YOU NEED TO SIGN UN IN THE U.S FOR THE TOURNAMENT , www.loscabostunajackpot.com



October 19th to 25th, 2013
Numbers at a glance: Billfish 51%, Dorado 74%, Tuna 30%, Wahoo 10%
Overall Catch Success Rate All Species Combined 94%

BILLFISH: Wow, what a week! As most of you know Bisbee took place this past week and we have written a lot about it already, but not everybody enters the big bucks competition, so how did our regular clients do? In one word, fabulous. We had some of the best catches of the year, starting with Pisces Rebecca with a 566 LB blue marlin the day before the Bisbee Tournament, for angler George Hansen from Idaho Falls. Captain Jose Ramon saw the fish jump a mile away and thought it was a manta ray, as they got closer he realized it was a blue marlin that was feeding and quickly dropped back a tuna they had boated earlier in the day.  George went to work and after about an hour, the crew realized there was something wrong; the fish had died. They pulled in the line by hand to find that the leader had wrapped around the tail, meaning the fish had been pulled backwards and drowned. Next day Giles Patterson from Cincinnati was fishing aboard Pisces La Brisa and was having fun with his group setting out cedar plugs and pulling in school size tuna. As he was reeling in a 15 lb. tuna, a huge marlin emerged from the depths and swallowed his tuna, cedar plug and all. Giles puffed away for over four hours until the fish could not be seen and was not reacting; the marlin had expired and again they guys had to hand line it up. To their surprise it was much bigger than they thought tipping the scales at 591 LBS. Next day out, it was another 31 ft. Bertram this time Pisces Tracy Ann, that had a blue marlin, but they were successful in releasing the approximately 360 LB fish. Attitude Adjustment & La Brisa went on to release blue marlin around the 300 LB mark later in the week and Shambala had three blues a little under 300 LBS which they released. It was nice to see a return of the striped marlin this past week too, the catches being usually a single fish plus numbers of dorado or tuna; some boats had two fish and only Yahoo managed to release three in one day. Our total billfish catch was of 65 fish, consisting of 51 striped marlin, 11 blue marlin & 4 sailfish.

OTHER SPECIES: Great numbers again this week on dorado, making it our number one catch with seventy four percent of boats catching between one and twenty five fish between 15 and 35 LBS; our total dorado catch was 535 fish. Pacific side was were the dorado were concentrated with bait & green colored lures working well. Yellow fin tuna catches took a step up this week, which is great news for the upcoming tuna tournament.   Thirty percent of boats found school size fish and had fun catching up to thirty five in a day. Some fish were large, such as a 125 lb’er caught aboard Pisces Ruthless by Richard Hartley from South Africa – our total tuna count was 298.  Wahoo catches complimented the rest of the catches with ten percent of our boats catching fish up to 40 lbs.
WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear skies, seas mostly calm, with some chop in the afternoons.
LOCATION: Pacific, lighthouse to San Jaime.
BEST LURES: Petrolero, green, live bait, cedar plugs.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 83 F

The Story Behind the 774 LB Winning Fish

Captain Kevin "Cubby" Pahl on right, First Lady Angler to win Bisbee Linda Williams & John Williams right, proud of his wife  - he almost had a
"heart attack" when he heard they had won.

Joy was evident in the voice of Captain Kevin “Cubby” Pahl captain of the 60 ft. Hatteras II Success, when we reached him by phone the day after his team had landed the winning 774 LB fish, in the Bisbee Black & Blue Tournament – the second largest qualifier in the competition’s 33 year history.

As tends to happen in the world’s richest billfish tournament, everybody was kept guessing right up until the end, especially as Martha McNab, a well know local woman angler looked set to be a shoo in to be the first ever female to win the Super Bowl of fishing, with her 525 LB blue marlin caught on day two of the three day event. That milestone was to be reached, but surprisingly not by Martha, but by Linda Williams from Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Captain Cubby told us that he had fished the Pacific the two previous days as everybody knew that several big blues from the charter fleet had  been caught there as well as the fish landed by Martha aboard Retriever; he fished all the well- known spots and came up blank. On the last day of the tournament he thought “the clock is ticking and at least a hundred boats are turning right to the Pacific, I am going to go the other way, up to Destiladeras, the water looks good and there is no traffic”. Team Success worked the area trolling their lures without action so Cubby systematically worked his way to the outer Gordo as the clock ticked on and with only thirty five minutes left to go in the tournament, the water behind the boat exploded as a massive marlin charged the Petrolero lure with its mouth wide open. “Everybody saw it bite” said Cubby, “my team were all in their positions and we were all watching the lures; I drive the boat standing backwards so I can see them. We could see that the fish was over 500 lbs. and it jumped at least six times, which is a lot for a fish of that size. We had the fish to the wire in an hour, but it was still strong and headed away from us, so we decided to let it go more time. After about another hour we had it in the corner and threw all the metal (gaffs) we had into it; we didn’t want to take any chances. The team did their job perfectly and the hardest thing was getting it into the boat, no easy feat with an almost 800 LB fish”.

 

Cubby praised his crew consisting of his Mexican deckhand Antonio “Pelon” Zuniga, his brother Craig Pahl who was aboard as an angler along with Dave Reid, who is a captain on another boat,  Jan Howard and of course owner of II Success, Linda Williams. Cubby stated “Linda loves to fish and this could not have happened to a nicer or more generous person. The guys on the dock respect Linda for her fishing skills. This is a dream come true for her, she was thrilled just to participate, definitely something on her bucket list.” Linda’s husband John, who owns a house framing company, had urged her to fly down to fish the tournament, which she did bringing along friend Jan Howard. He was totally shocked to get a phone call to say they had won and flew into Cabo Saturday to be present for the awards ceremony.

 

Captain Kevin “Cubby” Pahl is well known and liked around Cabo; the 51 year old is originally from Carlsbad, California and grew up fishing out of Oceanside. He has been a professional skipper in Cabo for the past 29 years and this win is the highlight of his fishing career and his largest fish to date. This day almost didn’t happen though, as last year he underwent his second hip replacement surgery, during which he contracted a severe infection, followed by an adverse reaction to the drugs given him, which put him in the critical care unit for six days. There was a moment when he thought it was a possibility that he would never fish again, making this victory even sweeter.



Payout At Bisbee Black & Blue

 

TEAM II SUCCESS CELBRATES THEIR FIRST PLACE VICTORY.
 

 

Biggest check at Bisbee tonight was $1,185,862.00 - here are the results.
1st Place II Success 774 lb blue marlin $368,675.00
2nd Place Retriever 525 lb blue marlin $1,185,862.00

DESPITE BEING NUDGED OUT OF FIRST PLACE, TEAM RETRIEVER STILL HAD THE BIGGEST PAYDAY

 3rd Place Marlin Queen 343 lb black marlin $34,762.00
 

4th Place Go Deep 323 lb blue marlin $9,270.00
5th Place Sea Angel 313 lb blue marlin $966,689.00 (no that is not a typo)

TEAM SEA ANGEL HAD ONE OF THE LARGEST PAYOUTS EVER FOR 5TH PLACE

 1st Place release 3 blues the sailboat Titan $63,575.00
2nd Place release 3 blues Shambala $21,993.00
3rd Place release 3 blues Reel Pain II $12,218.00
Release is decided on who caught first when places are tied like this.

Massive 774 LB Blue Marlin Gives Female Angler Surprise Victory in Bisbee Black & Blue

PHOTO BY GARY GRAHAM

Massive 774 LBS blue marlin gives surprise late hour victory for lady angler Linda Williams aboard Success in Bisbee Black & Blue. This will take 1st place but won't necessarily pay most money because of the optional categories they were or were not entered in. Stay tuned for tournament payout results.

525 LB FISH NETS LOCAL WOMAN 1.2 MILLION DOLLARS

Why does this woman look so happy? Perhaps because she just caught a fish worth 1.2 Million Dollars...Martha McNabb was thrilled last night after landing the biggest fish so far in the 2013 Bisbee Black & Blue; even though she  is not entered across the board, it appears that her fish caught yesterday, weighing 525 LBS will net her a big pay day. Who knows, if no larger fish are caught today, the last day of the competition,  the fish will be worth even more. Martha is a die hard fisherwoman and should she win will be the first female ever to win the Bisbee. Martha is no stranger to success though, this five foot two powerhouse landed a 635 lb blue marlin several years ago in the Bisbee, but was bumped to second place by a boat that caught two fish in the 300 -350 lb plus range, that when added together beat the weight of her fish. Martha loves fishing in Cabo aboard her 61 ft Viking "Retriever" with her crew of local Mexican guys. GIRL POWER, in what is mostly a macho world.