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The beginning of the year is striped marlin time here in Cabo, as the water has cooled to just the right temperature and the bait that they favor has moved back into our area. Schools of Pacific greenback mackerel can be seen breezing on the surface, and occasionally, an eruption will occur as the marlin that follow them get hungry and slash in on the attack, forcing the bait to escape into the air. A live bait hooked through the nose and thrown to the edge of the school is likely to get eaten quickly.
If a first-time angler is hooked up to one of these feisty billfish, they often say that they must be hooked up to a whale! I almost always respond that the lures and baits we use for whales are quite a bit larger and everyone gets a good laugh. Of course, everyone knows that we don’t fish for whales, but there are plenty of them around us this time of year.
Every fishing trip results in whale sightings and every captain out on the water keeps a careful eye out for the signs of whales in the area, such obvious ones as spouts, and the less obvious ones, such as the small slicks they leave on the surface called “footprints.” No one wants to run into one of these giant mammals and damage their boat and hurt the whale. It does happen though, and the results are never good for either the boat or the whale.
While hitting a whale with your boat is something to be avoided, having one come close can be an invigoration experience. Many people have never seen one of these mammals up close and personal, and it is a real bonus to have it happen during a fishing trip. I have had it happen almost every trip out in the spring, and more often than not, during the rest of the year. My most recent up-close experience happened just a few weeks ago.
When we left the marina it was gray light, just a blush appearing on the horizon. The boats still had cockpit and running lights on, but they were barely needed now. As we started to power up, while passing Lover’s Beach, I saw what appeared to be large porpoise just 100 feet to my left. I slowed down and called to my passengers and they rushed outside to try to take pictures. Suddenly, I realized that what we were watching were indeed porpoise, but the largest of the species. Also called killer whales, they are not true whales, but called that, because they are known to hunt and kill baby whales. We don’t often see pods of them in Cabo; this was only the third time in eight years I had seen them.
As we approached the point, I could see others up ahead, and ended up counting seven of them in this pod. One had a baby with her. As it became brighter with the rising sun, two of them broke off from the group and came behind the boat, riding the waves we put out, just like surfers. I managed to get one good photo as one of them came out of the water, and then they were off at high speed. We were moving at 10 knots and they just sped away from us.
On another fishing trip we had run all the way up to the Finger Banks, 50 miles north up the Pacific side of the Cape. There was a striped marlin bite going on there that had lasted two weeks already, and we finally had someone who wanted in on that action. We ended up releasing 17 striped marlin in three hours, but what made the trip for me was the whales we saw. I have seen some beautiful sights on the ocean, things that made me wish for a video camera, and this trip was one of them.
It was a sight I would have expected to see on National Geographic. The water was flat, calm and blue, so I was up in the tower, taking us between the bait balls of sardines. We came up to one ball and I was amazed at the sight. The bait ball covered an area of almost a half-acre and, from the height of the tower I could see dozens of striped marlin slashing in and out of the edges, picking off the baitfish. There were Dorado everywhere, their gold and blue rainbow flashing of colors, darting in and out of the swirling sardines. Clouds of pelicans took turns diving into the middle of the activity, beaks wide open, and frigate birds swooped on the surface picking up individual fish as they tried to escape the assault from below.
Suddenly, the predators stopped for a moment and then, in a split second, a finback whale, mouth wide open, erupted through the middle of the bait ball and into the air, sardines spilling from its mouth like sand from a bucket before it splashed down and things returned to how they had been. That was a truly unbelievable scene and we talked about it for the rest of the trip. We ended up seeing two of the rare finback whales that day, both of them feeding on the sardines.
Last February, we were fishing for striped marlin right on the ledge at the lighthouse. This was during the humpback and gray whale migration and they were everywhere; the grays close to the beach, and the humpbacks farther offshore. We counted over 40 whales that trip and some of them were close enough to the boat that we could almost reach out and touch them. The humpback whales were doing full breach jumps, throwing their entire bodies out of the water, “spyhopping”, which is when they stand on their tail and push their heads out of the water to look around. Once in a while, we could see a series of large splashes as they smacked their tail on the water time after time, an act called “tail-lobbing.”
The gray whales inshore were not quite as active, although they were more numerous. There was an occasional half breach, but up and down the beach, as far as you could see, there were spouts of whale breath going up, and there were mothers with babies everywhere. It made me a little uncomfortable to be fishing among so many of these large creatures, knowing that at any time one of them could accidentally bump into the boat, or heaven forbid, actually do a breach and fall onto the boat. I have had them jump so close that they threw water into the cockpit, and I have had them surface and breathe so close that we could smell their breath (Yuk!).
Although the beginning of the year is the best time to see whales in Cabo, as it is migration time for the grays and humpback, we have whales here year round. I have seen pilot whales, pygmy whales, blue whales, finback whales and some whales I can’t identify. I have been fishing for yellowfin tuna among porpoise and while fighting a large tuna for over an hour, had a whale surface right along the side of the boat, as if to watch us and see what we were doing. Eventually, it must have decided that we were not fighting fair and decided to help the tuna by swimming across our line and breaking it! That was a heartbreaker, but at least we had already put a few smaller fish in the box first.
Speaking of tuna, one of the most bizarre situations I have ever come across involved a whale. We had been fishing all day and had caught a few marlin and a couple of dorado, but had not lucked into any tuna yet. We spotted a whale a long distance from us and decided to troll over toward it. It took quite a while, but when we finally got close to the whale, we thought there was something wrong with it. To our surprise we saw that the whale was surrounded by a school of small baitfish, to the point that the whale looked almost three times as large as it really was. When we got within 100 feet, we finally saw what was going on. A school of yellowfin tuna that averaged about 40 pounds each had been feeding on the bait, and the bait was using the whale as cover. As soon as we got a little bit closer to the whale, about half the baitfish headed for our boat, attempting to use us as well. With all that bait up against the boat it was no problem to reach out with the bait net and capture some of them. It didn’t take long for us to rig up with this perfect bait and over the next 45 minutes we had a blast. Toss out a bait and watch a tuna boil on it immediately, lift and reel, lift and reel, hold on every time the fish made a run, and weave in and out as lines crossed up. It was great, and we ended up catching a dozen nice tuna.
Apparently, while we were occupied with catching the fish, the whale saw its chance to escape, and suddenly all the bait was under our boat. We had enough tuna in the fish box but still, I felt bad to leave the rest of the bait school without anywhere to hide once we left. Oh well, nature has her way of making things balance out in the end, and maybe we were there for a reason, just as the whale was there for a reason. That is the only time I have seen a whale used for cover by baitfish, but other captains have told me they have seen the same thing.
I just love it when we see whales during a fishing trip. It’s a bonus for everyone and seeing a whale is not an everyday occurrence for most anglers. I know there are bound to be future encounters to write and talk about, as every season brings more of these magnificent creatures to our region.
By Captain George Landrum
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