November Bluewater fishing in Venice, LA
Had a great trip Friday November 21 with Terry Pickens et al...they were supposed to fish Sunday but with the approaching front and good forecast for Friday it was just too good not to go...Tough start as bait was hard to come by but it turned out it really wouldn't matter. Thanks to Capt. Al for the live pogeys which unfortunately expired before getting to the "spot". Managed to kill our first and only two hardtails on a pair of dolphin. The bull went about 35 and the cow about 30 pounds...Fortunately I had a few left over cockahoes from last Saturday that had been forgotten in my haste to make it back for anniversary dinner..it amazes me that they survived..ended up missing 2 more dolphin - one on a hook-up and the other on the gaff. 10AM out of bait so we put out three braids and hooked up a serious fish on the pogey murauder..200 yards on the first and only run. With no real fight we started thinking record wahoo or tail wrapped tuna..turned out to be the later...had two gaffs ready when we could see both allison fins to the tail - angler Terry Pickens later admitted that he thought it was a sea turtle at first sight..turned out the fish had hog tied itself with the five foot wire leader slicing to the bone of the tail effectively pinning the snap swivel deep into a freshly cut 4" crease in the fork. The wire leader ran cleanly along the curve of the fish being held by the hooks on the bait and the swivel embedded in the fish's tail - we suspect the fish hog tied itself on the initial run and ran out of gas when it could no longer beat its tail..it came in backwards in less than 10 minutes. The bad news is when it was hauled to the deck it went ballsitic..ripping both J-hooks out of the plug after the welded rings failed on each swivel..the bait was also crushed under the weight of a thrashing tuna...made for some excitement...trolled on a grassline about 48 miles from South Pass until quiting time..notone strike. The fish weighed 149 gutted and bled-I'm guessing it would have been 165 or better had we just thrown it in the box. Glad we didn't because the meat was purple and irradescent to the bone...Saturday Novemeber 22nd left me guessing on what to do..I honestly didn't think about where and what I was going to do until Jeff Edgecombe asked me where he could send some VIP's while I was fueling up. I wasn't going to fight Saturday boat traffic at the usual spots and I wasn't going to make another trans Gulf crossing for 4 hours of fishing time...after a brief disscussion with Bob Collins and crew we decided on wahoo as plan A and AJ/Grouper as the back-up. Samer problem..once we got close toour target area the water turned solid blue..put out the spread and prepared to do our laps...after the first pass at a historically productive spot we got a knockdown on a Braid bait...as we slowed down to fight the fish we left both the ballyhoo baits out and bam..two more wahoo on -one that cleared the water by 6 feet..we thought it was a sailfish at first..with some quick shuffling on the deck and some great gaff work by Darryl we were able to put all three fish in the boat. After a round of high fives at 8AM we readied for our next pass..fish on..a single that pulled a good bit of line and got off...next 2 passes same result..fish on, nice run and fish off. 6 strikes in 20 minutes, 3 fish in the cooler and 3 that won't bite for the rest of the day. Needless to say we were excited about the prospects for the area but with the exception of one blackfin th remainder of the area was dead...pulled on a nice color change to about the 24 mile rigs where it petered out...managed to pick up some AJ's on jigs before heading in early to catch the LSU game... Paradise Outfitters - 985-845-8006
Fishing Report Remarks
He who loses to another does not get the satisfaction of losing to me !!!!!
