Galapagos Islands
San Cristobal
Well the 2012 season is underway and it may be too early to tell but I trust we will have good one. The rains that were absent because of la Nina in mainland Ecuador in 2011 seem to be back in full force. With the rains will come much need nutrients all the way out to Galapagos. In turn the sardines should be showing up soon. For the last month the activity has been mainly on 88 Bank 70 miles from port. Boats have been reporting mixed numbers of raises of striped marlin and the presence of sardines until last week.
This week we have fished Draga Bank 11 miles from port, 88 Bank and a new bank recently discovered less than 50 miles from port.
Jan 25, 2012– we picked up Tom Wheaton from the airport. Tom is a regular with us each year and an excellent angler. A 20 minute run had us fishing onboard the Big Fish on Draga Bank 11 miles from the port of Baquerizo Moreno. Trolling for about 4 hours produced a couple of tuna and one marlin raise.
Jan 26, 2012– we rode the Big Fish to 88 Bank 68 miles. The bank was full of dolphin life, seas were calm and water color was a nice clear blue. The monitor showed a good number of balls of bait. The marlin were finicky and we managed to raised 9 stripeys and a blue. Tom Wheaton went 3 for 4 on the fish he dropped a bait back to with circle hooks. All the stripeys were nice fish ranging 170 to 190 in size.
Jan 27, 2012– onboard with tom again we decided to check out a bank 20 miles East of 88 Bank. The unnamed bank turned out to be quite deep around 1100 in its shallowest parts. We did not really detect any bait although some life was on the surface so we ran to 88 bank. The afternoon bite produced 5 raises 2 bites from striped marlin and one release on circle hook. Water remained 74 F and the day was beautifully calm and sunny.
Jan 28, 2012– we decided to take the Big Fish and check out Rosa Blanca. Once we arrived on our favorite spot the Honey Hole we found the presence of bait quite encouraging. Although we did not raise any marlin anywhere on Rosa Blanca it was encouraging to see bait balls of sardines in the fish finder. The water temperature was 74 and the ocean was very calm. We caught a few dorado around20# and big eye tuna were present all around the bank. 2 tunas would make for a great addition to dinner along with the mahi mahi. It will be just a matter of time for the marlin to show up.
Jan 29, 2012– Tom Wheaton’s last day fishing with us onboard the Big Fish. Bank 88 was the target. The morning bite was a bit slow even though there was plenty of bait. Tom caught his first striped marlin of the day around 11:00 am. We would raise 8 more stripeys for a total of 9 marlin this day.
5 bites and 2 releases.
Folks I have the feeling with the rains on mainland Ecuador starting to carry out the nutrients all the way to Galapagos and the sardines showing up that it will be a matter of a couple more weeks before Galapagos is back to being the greatest marlin fishery on the planet.
