Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja Peninsula is a famous destination for marlin sport fishing. During the Los Cabos Billfish Tournament in October 2023, 42 teams released 583 striped marlin. Of those, 390 releases were made by just the first three teams. This means that 67% of the fish were hooked by only 3 teams and 92% of the teams could have used some assistance to get a larger share of the fish. This is where Fishing Maps comes in because the distribution of striped marlin in both space and time is related to sea surface temperature (or SST).
An analysis of 10 years of data showed that striped marlin sportfishing catches are highest in the Winter, but that the heaviest fish are females that are caught in the Spring. Highest catch rates were recorded between SSTs of 72 to 75F (or 22 to 24C). In the map shown below (Figure 1), this SST range is colored green to yellow, and occurs off the southwest tip of the peninsula on in this example (July 2, 2024). These temperature bounds are marked by the red lines (Figure 1).
The temperature band where highest catch rates were taken (Figure 1) is not the same as the full temperature range for the striped marlin. The full range is much wider, as shown in the map below (Figure 2). Striped marlin may be found along the entire Pacific coast of Baja and into Southern California waters in early July, as well as in the Gulf of California. The full temperature range is almost 20 degrees F, from 61 to 80F.
The optimal temperatures are narrower, from 68 to 75F (Figure 3). This shows that the temperatures where highest catch rates were found (72 to 75F) were in the higher part of the optimal temperature range (68 to 75F).
The bottom line is that SST maps provide a window into where the highest catch rates should be. It is not the only variable, as I’ll discuss in other blogs, but it is a key one.
References
White, S. 2024. Betting big in Baja: The Los Cabos Billfish Tournament. Marlin magazine 282.