SEA OF CORTEZ-EAST CAPE, THE WITCH DOCTOR

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THE WITCH-DOCTOR

Mark Rayor owner of Jen Wren Sportfishing bringing you an East Cape NON-fish report. The wind has blown so hard this week it has not been fishable most of the week.

I'm happy to say our timing was good and we were able to use the last calm day to get Jen Wren III out of the water. It is sad but our season is over and we won't resume charter fishing until March.

I do want to share an experience we had while fishing last week along with some pretty cool photos. One of our last days out there slow trolling for marlin with skipjack for bait we were not having any luck. I decided to try putting out a Witch-Doctor teaser. It is a rather large mirrored thing that rocks back and forth while being trolled and reflects sun light. In the right conditions it looks like a strobe going off in the water behind the boat.

We were fishing with a group of about a half dozen boats on the La Ribera high spot. After a short period of time a pod of orcas cruised by. Apparently our teaser caught one of the whales eyes and the pod came a bit closer. Before we knew it the whole pod was in our pattern nudging our baits and checking us out. One whale even came up almost to our swim step and gently pushed on the Witch-Doctor. If it attracted the orcas this has to be an effective tool to attract marlin as well.

Now that we are not charter fishing and have our cruisers in dry dock for the winter I will still try to get out on calm days. I can use one of our small tenders and fish the shoreline for sierra and a little further off shore when the weather allows. I'll do my best to try and continue to post reports as to what fishing conditions are like on the East Cape.

Yesterday the seas starting to calm and it looks like we might get a break for a day or two before the wind ramps up again. Sierra fishing was good up and down the beach today for tin boaters and beach fisherman.

One day all is calm

The next day it is not

The folks at Cabo Yachts had their doubts that we would be able to pull our 35 Flybridge out over the sand.

Curious orcas. It is not every day but not unusual to sight them in the Sea of Cortez

You can tell this is the male by the larger dorsal fin. Most of the time we only see one male with a pod of females. The male always stands off while the females play. I want to come back as a male killer whale in my next life time ... top of the food chain traveling around with a harem of beautiful ladies. Sign me up!

They slowly came closer

Yes, that is a frightened skipjack we were trolling jumping out of the water

They hung around our boat for a good 15 minutes

On this day we didn't have any trouble with sea lions taking our bait or catch

Sea lion? Make my day

Finally one nudged the Witch-Doctor

As fast as they arrived they disappeared.

Mark Rayor

http://markrayor.blogspot.com

www.teamjenwren.com