PISCES FISH REPORT
DEC 29th 2012 to JAN 4th, 2013
Overall Catch Success Rate 99%
Numbers at a glance: Billfish 73%, Dorado 78%, Tuna 7.6%
BILLFISH: Fishing is stupendous in Cabo right now, lots of striped marlin, loads of dorado and a huge 1000 lb plus fish that got away. Captain Ricardo Agundez aboard Pisces “Great Escape Jr” was out on December 29th, aboard his vessel a 35 ft Cabo, with angler Richard McNew from Grand Rapids, Michigan aboard. They headed up the Pacific and picked up ten dorado off of Las Margaritas. They started to head further up the coast towards San Jaime and had a couple of striped marlin come up and tease them, they put out some ballyhoo but couldn’t get a hook-up, suddenly they saw a marlin cutting through the water towards their bait and thought it was a striper, but as it got closer to the boat and swallowed the bait, they saw that is was a massive marlin.I asked the captain “How big?” he said , “I am not exaggerating, it was more than 1000 lbs”, I asked “Bigger than the 800 lb’er that you got two years ago?” he replied “Much bigger”. Keeping his previous catch in mind I knew he giving a truthful estimate. They fought the fish for five hours and twenty minutes; it parked itself like a truck, just twenty feet from the boat and about five feet below the surface and they could not budge it. When they initially hooked up they were four miles offshore, between Margaritas and San Jaime but by the time they lost the fish, the were a further nine miles out. The rod snapped, two guides, below the tip and the line broke and the fish was gone. It is interesting to note, that most of the largest fish ever caught in Cabo, have been close to shore and off-season – in fact there is always one really big fish caught right around the first week of January, perhaps this one was it. Striped marlin catches were also excellent this week resulting in a seventy three percent catch success rate for billfish. Some of the catches were outstanding and pretty much all were accompanied by a smattering of dorado. Everybody did so well we don’t have room to mention all the great catches – January 3rd was particularly good when Pisces 61 ft Viking “El Gallo” released eleven striped marlin ranging in size from 100 to 160 lbs, at the Old Lighthouse for the Narsete family from Texas. This same day Pisces “Cabolero” released five marlin for Nate Jiona & Jenny Velasquez from Houston. Pisces “Adriana” also released five stripers for Mick Liska & Josh Smith from Ohio & Indianapolis respectively. January 2nd saw “El Gallo” producing the goods again with five marlin for Leighton Tervitt from Singapore, as well as three dorado. Pisces “Fearless” got four stripers for Luis Camarena from Mexico City along with eight dorado. “Yahoo” had anglers from Atlanta on board and also released five this same day. Pisces “Bill Collector” also deserves a mention for five stripers released and fourteen dorado (6 released) for Tom Shipsey from Novato, California, on New Year’s Eve. Pisces anglers caught a total of 137 striped marlin and 1 sailfish – all but one released. THANK YOU anglers for letting the fish go.
OTHER SPECIES: It is quite unusual to still have so many dorado around; in fact it seems more like November right now. The water temperature is still above 70 F and could be the reason they are still sticking around. Anglers caught from one to sixteen with weights between 15 and 35 lbs. Both lures and bait worked well for this species. Our total count for dorado was 367 fish, with many released. Tuna catches slowed down considerably this week with just eight percent of boats catching school size fish, but then again with marlin & dorado catches so good, only a few boats even tried for them. Pisces “Tracy Ann” had a wonderful day on December 29th, with ten dorados, a mako shark and two striped marlin for Marlin Schul from Indianapolis. We had three small wahoo, some skipjacks, a cabrilla, one yellow tail and needlefish caught by our panga clients. Lots of whales to see in the area at the moment.
LOCATION: Pacific, Land’s End to San Jaime.
WEATHER CONDITIONS: Several cloudy days, with rain on December 30th, now clear. Seas are calm.
AVERAGE WATER TEMP: 73 F
BEST LURES: Live mackerel, ballyhoo, green/yellow, petrolero, orange/brown.
Based on the catches of Pisces by Tracy Ehrenberg