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4 Sep 2011 - WHERE'S WALTER?
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Category: Mexico Cabo San Lucas
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Author Name: MARK RAYOR
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This week my life long friend Gary Street of Laguna
Hills arrived to participate in the La Paz Gold Cup
black and blue marlin tournament. For the last few
weeks marlin fishing on the East Cape has been
very slow so I was hopeful we would find more
action up north. This tournament is always loads of
fun. It is a two day event with a 200 pound
minimum limit for the blues and blacks. The
coordinators have thrown a nice curve ball into this
event. That is a $50 per pound penalty for bringing
in a short fish. A 10 pound judgement error could
cost a contestant $500.
We headed Jen Wren III up the Golden Sea of Cortez
a couple days early to check out the fishing grounds
of the tournament. Starting at the South end of
Cerralvo we trolled hookless teasers past Las
Cruces around La Reina by Punta Coyote and along
the western side of Espiritu Santo. As the day got
late we anchored for the evening in a beautiful cove
at Isla de Partida. During the day we had raised
sailfish, striped marlin and dorado on our teasers
and were able to land one of each switching them
to live bait. We had also seen loads of nice sized
skip jack almost everywhere we went. What we had
not seen were any blue or black marlin.
The following morning we woke up to a pretty swift
southern breeze and took our time getting under
way. We continued to troll north past Los Islotes
and out to the famous El Bajo. There we also found
loads more skip jack along with stripers sails and
dorado. No big marlin but with all the bait and
beautiful blue water we were still optimistic a big
fish was in our future. We cut the day a little short
and headed to La Paz to fuel, get checked into a slip
and register for the tournament.
It wasn't until the morning we made the decision to
head back out to El Bajo. Upon arrival we were able
to catch four big skippys in about 5 minutes. We
trolled 3 on the surface and one in our down rigger.
With the previous couple days experience it was
obvious the big fish were not interested in marlin
lures. I hoped that trolling live baits would key them
off. At the end of the day we had not raised a fish.
Only two qualifying blue marlin were brought to the
scale for the 79 teams fishing. One fish weighed
260 pounds and the other 202.
Day two our strategy changed. It was obvious
fishing was pathetic and there were not many fish
in the area. With that we could cover much more
area with lures so that is what we went to. We also
changed areas and headed for the southern end of
Cerralvo Island. Again we didn't have a smell all
day. It turned out only one fish was weighed in at
203 pounds.
When tournament control called lines out at 5PM we
were much closer to Buena Vista then La Paz and
just headed for home. After running for 15 minutes
we found a huge school of spotted dolphin with
tuna in a feeding frenzy. It was a sight I dream
about. The fish going ballistic and not another boat
in sight. It didn't take long to land limits of
yellowfin before pointing the boat south and
heading home.
Mark Rayor
www.thejenwren.com
www.vistaseasport.com
markrayor.blogspot.com
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