Cabo San Lucas - sportfishing charters /where to stay ?
 

Great, I did find that other site since here (as you saw) - thanks
again.
I'll follow up over there.


"Bill" wrote in message
ups.com...
EXCELLENT, Thanks very much Bill.

No problem ... email me if you wish, since this thread is technically
off-topic on this particular newsgroup ...

One more thing I forgot to ask.... everything else being equal: for
3-4
guys should we get a ... 28', 32' etc ?

We always tried to fish just two per boat, but of course it's more
expensive ... you can get four anglers on the 28 ft and larger boats
though but someone will likely not have a shot at a marlin that day.

Might we get 2 at once and be in
each other's way on a smaller boat ?

You can usually handle doubles OK, the striped marlin aren't so big
that they take a lot of line ... we had four sailfish on at once in
Cabo and landed all four with just my wife and I fishing, for example.

In January, assuming we take turns
bringing 'em in - would we catch a few each ? would we be lucky to
hook
into 1 or 2 per day total ? Or more like 1 per hour ?

Often you will see a lot of marlin on the surface and pitch live baits
to them but sometimes they won't eat (usually when they are plugged
with squid and the mackerel doesn't look appetizing I guess). When
you
do hook one it often takes 20 - 40 minutes or more to land it too.

1-2 marlin per day is a pretty good average in January on the better
boats ... I think our best day was 5 stripes, several days we released
3 stripes, plenty of 1-2 striped marlin days ... it's not unusual to
hear of a boat catching more ... we fished lighter tackle (down to 12
# test by the end) but the boats you'll be on will use 40 # for the
live bait so you can control the fish better.

Here are some numbers for a three year period from a few years back
showing the average # of striped marlin caught in January by Pisces
boats ... note that some of these boats weren't actually after marlin
but instead after tuna or going inshore for roosterfish or wahoo or
whatever ...

first year ... 1.3 marlin/day, 2nd best month of the year (Dec was
best
with 1.6)
2nd year ... 2.0 marlin/day, 2nd best month (Feb was best with 2.6 per
day)
3rd year ... 1.2 marlin/day, 4th best month (Dec, March, June were
better)

Overall for these 3 years January averaged 1.5 marlin/day, tied for
first with Feb. So you picked a good month.

As for striped/blue marlin: I wanted to go earlier for the blue
marlin,
but was outvoted. We're in Boston and the consensus was that striped
marlin and a warm climate in JANUARY is better than anything in
OCTOBER
(when the weather's not bad here) .

Odds on blues in Cabo are more like one every three days and only in
the summer and fall ... the stripes typically weigh 120 - 150 lbs
each,
the blues 200 - 350 lbs each, with a few monster blues over 700 lbs
caught each year. Good to break in on stripes ...

Here's one other piece of data, the catch records for each month for a
seven boat fleet from a few years back (it probably won't format right
here but you can copy/paste it and clean it up) ... you can see how
the
fishing changes in the summer and fall when the water is much warmer
... note the increase in "food fish" (tuna, dorado) in summer and fall
too ...

Striped Marlin Blue Marlin Black Marlin Tuna Dorado Wahoo
Roosters

Jan 217 0 0 101 46 12 7
Feb 308 1 0 137 83 2 37
Mar 275 0 0 139 21 0 62
Apr 148 0 0 337 39 1 39
May 263 0 0 535 78 0 117
Jun 324 0 0 88 86 5 59
Jul 121 13 4 58 195 2 22
Aug 69 31 19 463 521 3 27
Sep 27 27 4 181 583 6 28
Oct 32 21 7 226 809 4 9
Nov 161 15 1 390 1236 4 10
Dec 173 1 0 163 817 9 10

I saw on the other site that you are getting recommendations for other
places like San Jose, East Cape, Mazatlan, Zihua/Ixtapa and Vallarta
... we've been to all those places too and none are very good in
January for marlin and none have the numbers of striped marlin that
Cabo does, but all offer good fishing for something some of the time.
For striped marlin Cabo is far and away the best bet in the winter.

Bill