Margarita V adopted by pod of orcas!

Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend Bryan and his captain had the privilege of hosting the Calley family from Flagstaff for an “eco cruise”…that turned out to be a “once in a lifetime” event. The original objective was to swim  with the sea lions at San Pedro, and that turned out to be a success. The following are a few pictures from that activity (courtesy of David Calley and his Canon EOS Rebel!). I’ve not yet been able to identify the school of tropical reef fish that gathered around the boat..but I think they might be a variety of tang or clownfish.

However, on the return trip a pod of 10-12 orcas surrounded the boat somewhere near Bandito point and Club Paridisio, and then played with the boat for the next 30 minutes.  In my 31 years of boating experience in San Carlos I have never observed more than 2-3 orcas, so this was a unique experience. Fortunately for the sea lions of San Pedro, this does not appear to be a mammal eating pod…and perhaps they are addicted to squid or fish.  I have cropped the best pictures and the set of following pictures helps to accentuate the observable difference in males/females/juveniles via the dorsal fin.

Probably a female:

Probably a juvenile with sharp curve on dorsal fin

Solid and tall triangular dorsal fin of  male:

Male with juvenile

Mom and calf:

Female or juvie?

Twosome..probably mom and her calf:

Sorry we can’t guarantee this kind of fun on EVERY trip!

Happy Holidays, Dick

Team Margarita Sportfishing.

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Dec. 12th update

Lots of small yellowtail out front. We loaded up yesterday in an hour with a full cooler of yellowtail, sierra, and bonita. Today we tried jigging and casting a bit more, so we lasted two hours before we had our limit. The weather is getting nice and we might make a run south. The water is 73 degrees right off shore. There is a strong southern current bringing in warm water. In the middle of the week we saw a sailfish get caught just off of San Antonio. Supposedly a marlin and dorado were also caught that day. We’ll see what we can find out there!

Dec. 6th report

We made it to the island on Saturday on my friend’s boat. First drop and I had a yellowtail. Second a bonita and the third another yellowtail. Unfortunately that one broke us off as well as another dozen on the rocks. We caught over fifteen large bonita and over fifteen large skipjack. We put four big and two smaller yellowtail in the box.

I thought that seeing the first marlin jumping less than a half mile off the south tip was cool (and a good sign). When the bite cooled, we went to the north tip and saw another jumping in close. We decided to try trolling for a bit. We were headed back in close to try for bonita and had one jump inside us less that a couple hundred yards off the island. Yesterday we saw one just two miles off San Antonio and had another marlin feeding by the boat inside of that. The currents and winds are from the south and it looks like the dorado may be back within twenty miles of San Carlos. We might be on a tuna mission tomorrow on my friend’s boat.

Lots of yellowtail in close. We passed countless schools yesterday but they were on small baits. Maybe if I had scaled down the size of my baits I could have got a few. Our first pass I hooked one on the surface and we had another break off on a light spinning rod. We caught about seven bonita. The ‘run and gun’ fishermen and jiggers may have gotten a few more. What a great sign though. The fish were all over San Antonio and even the seamounts boiling. I guess that they have been catching them in the afternoon. It’s looking like a repeat of last years epic yellowtail fishing!

Dec. 2nd report

Sorry, I guess that I get carried away fishing. We went out on the 22nd to try to get one last marlin. The curse remained. We had one pull of 4-500 yards of line and get off a hundred feet from the boat. I had another on for thirty seconds. We saw about a dozen, missing a few others. We had one large Black take a swipe at a bait. We caught two medium sized dorado and a 23 and 25# fish, along with smaller ones. We may have been close to the tuna.

Tried a few days later missing one marlin just as the lines went in. We then thought we had a monster Black or tuna. After 45 minutes we pulled up a snagged manta ray. The next day as we were trolling by some small ones jumping and I was commenting how we had never snagged one before, we sure enough snagged another. Lots of bonita and sierra on inshore trips over Thanksgiving. A few cabrilla and pargo in close.
On the 30th we were out at sunrise. We picked up two small yellowtail and a handful of bonita. The big ones came up and we landed a 13 and 20# yellowtail. First big ones of the year. We caught one 9# sierra with them. We then caught over a dozen more bonita off of San Antonio and the seamounts. Lots of fish to eat! Pictures below of the 3 types of fish…bonita, sierra, yellowtail

three types of winter fish

One guy went south and caught a couple nice dorado, spotting marlin too. We saw one on the 28th on our way back from the island after snorkeling with the seals. We passed a dozen orcas that stayed and played with the boat for half an hour. The jumping babies had the little kids almost jumping out of the boat with excitement. I’m waiting for the pics!

Still warm water out there. Will be out tomorrow on a charter.