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limited time, we were satisfied, and were
in our eyes at least, the only ones who
'actually' caught striped marlin that
week.
Around the mid point in the trip, we
were given two days off for sightseeing
or whatever, which Gordon and I used to
great effect by chartering a panga.
Baby Roosterfish
These are small boats of around twenty
feet in length which tend mainly to work
inshore, though while we were there,
some of the panga's were catching and
releasing as many striped marlin as the
bigger boats.
They also had blue marlin too. But marlin were off the menu for us. We wanted to stick inshore, and in
particular to target rooster fish.
December unfortunately is not the best time for big roosters inshore. They tend to be more of a summer
species. But we fished for them anyway by slow trolling live-baits on the edge of the crest of the rollers
pushing in onto the steep sandy beaches. Real heart in the mouth stuff, riding the rising swells of some
of the bigger waves beam on.
Sometimes the skipper would get it just slightly wrong and have to gun the outboard at the very last
moment if a roller started to break early, which around day break in the poor light conditions made them
look even more ominous than would be the case later on in the day.
We did actually manage to catch a few rooster fish. Only small ones, but we had them. Dorado too, and
plenty of crevalle jacks, not too mention huge needle fish at four and five feet long, which look like
garfish with crocodiles heads and would constantly be crewing our expensive live baits to pieces.
We even found time to have a couple of hours with smaller baits over a section of shallow inshore reef
catching all sorts of everything. Then it was back to the arguments and frustrations on the bigger marlin
boats.
The evenings obviously were spent out eating and having a few drinks. Not too many though, as the
starts were always very early in morning around day break.
We also managed to sneak in an extra hour or so of fishing just as the sun went down, casting from a
man made boulder arm forming what looked like some sort of harbour entrance, throwing bar spoons
out into the darkness which were snapped up by barracuda and jacks.
I even went down there mid afternoon after one of the panga trips to try a spot of shore bait fishing for
anything and everything, catching a good mix of snappers, trigger fish and the like. Also sergeant majors
around the harbour entrance.
Holiday makers throwing bits of bread in had them swarming there, so I improvised a float from a piece
of wood, cadged a bit of fresh bread, and proceeded to fill my boots with those for half an hour. So all
in all, certainly from a species point of view, Cabo was a very successful trip.
The sight casting to the marlin, when eventually we got that sorted out was fantastic too. When a livebait
goes in, if a marlin was in feeding mood, it would suddenly light up neon blue then dart forward
and and grab it. An incredible sight, and one which most certainly would have been missed leaving
everything to the crew.
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