Gaff Top Apocalypse
 

Had Aubrey LaHaye and Zach Dubios from Cajun Lures on my boat last Sunday. I put 110 miles on the boat looking for fish and couldn't find any. That is until we hit the mouth of SW Pass and saw every bird in Vermilion Parish losing its mind. A cloud of birds in the middle of the pass can only mean one thing, GAFFTOPS. Chartreuse Thumping Mullet and Chicken on a Chain Little Jons on a 1/2 oz jighead did most of the damage that along with every other used plastic I had laying around the boat. I was on the big motor the entire time, and they didn't flinch, they just ate. We ended up with 40 but I think they could have caught 1000. Gave them to my neighbor for crab bait. Slime wasn't too bad, hit it with a bottle of the works and it pealed right off. I had the camera rolling and Zach made a video. Enjoy

https://youtu.be/wtZYfrig2lk

Hahahaha.....Awesome! Great video.

Blue shirt begging for trouble hauling in gaff tops on the deck with 8 feet of line out. :spineyes:

Don't say you guys weren't warned.....posting those photos and vids of such a fantastic haul will have CCA pushing gafftop limits up our wazoo quick fast in a heartbeat!!! Think TRIPLETAIL:cool:.

If they put up ridiculous non-science based gafftops limits I'm selling the boat and taking up curling. It will be like the feds and the red snapper all over again and you don't want to know the bath I took selling our offshore rig.




#leavethegafftopsalone!



:eek::eek::eek::grinpimp::grinpimp::grinpimp:

Thanks for the report. Looks like it's time for me to get back to Caldwell Reef

Thats great that other people were fishing the birds too. I'm sure they were disappointed seeing y'all killing them and finding out they were cats.

When they saw us catch the first couple they hurried up and came over. Didn't seem to impressed with us when they realized what was actually going on. lol


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To be said in a suthun Mississippi drawl.........Bro....you ain't wraaaat!

I'm luvin' it.

Need some real slow mo action so you can get detail of wiskers and snot whipping in the wind

You know you guys took them things home and cooked em!

Check out LaHaye trying to break my Mojo Bass. I told you you couldn't.


He's a bass fisherman, I think that was his first encounter with a gafftop.

The CCA douche nozzles are the fishing elite. I am sure they wouldn't want to tarnish their image by appearing concerned about the gaff top population. Although I want to kick myself because I would probably be winning the star if I wouldn't have talked so much $hit on here about the CCA.

Well that just happened.... I watched a 7 min gafttop vid

And now you're a better man for it. You're welcome


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Looks like fun but F them gaff top!!! Got stuck by one offshore a few weeks ago between my middle and pointer finger knuckle. My middle finger and all the way into my knuckle hurt for literally 2 damn weeks!

Gaff Top Apocalypse
 

I heard you gotta rub the slime from the gaff that sstung you on the wound

Gaff Top Apocalypse
 

I had one go through my index finger this past Saturday, I always thought they weren't as bad a hard head... I was wrong

I heard something similar except you had to rub the slime on a poagie and then lick the poagie. Doesn't do a damn thing for the sting but by the time you get the taste out of your mouth you'll have forgotten about the sting;).

Haha! The worst part was that we were on the trout pretty good too. After about 20/30 minutes of crying and cleaning it up, I grabbed my rod and got back after it and slung 4 trout in the boat on 4 straight casts and forgot about it pretty quick!

It works. Rub it on the belly slime

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Gafftops are fun when the drum aren't biting.

Kid: It hurts when I do that.

Dad: Don't do that.

MG, what's your theory on why there isn't a market for sail cats? They're not bad eating, easier to clean than most, readily available and everybody knows the name catfish. The yield isn't great, but neither is sheepsheads and drumMost rookies I fish with ask about even a hardhead being good to eat when I'm loosing them back into the water.

I've eaten sailcats and hardheads and there's not much difference between them and a freshwater cat. The main thing is you don't get as much meat off of them. I'm not saying I would have kept all of what they caught but if I scratched on everything else and that's all the had we would have been eating sailcat for supper.

There is a small market, but prices are usually too low to justify the effort and expense of transporting them from the boat to the buyers.

The guys who run trot lines for black drum catch a lot of them. Black drum has a stable market (mostly as imitation crab) that is strong enough to cover the transportation costs of a highly perishable product.

I'm not sure how much restaurant catfish might be gafftops, but the supply of gafftops seems to outstrip the demand.

I would theorize farm-raised catfish dominates the market. And I think if you put freshwater cat flesh against a sailcat flesh, I'd be able to pick it. But that doesn't mean it's bad. And the sail cat's average size would seem to make it viable.

A significant hinderance would be the large amount of red meat (I call it the bloodline) on the skin side, which is much more than drum or sheepshead and bad for its aesthetics. The time lost in processing that out of the filet is probably a factor.

Black drum is almost the default fine dining white flesh fish selection in New Orleans. Maybe it's different elsewhere.

"Black drum is almost the default fine dining white flesh fish selection in New Orleans. Maybe it's different elsewhere."

#baygrouper

You really didn't have to go all the way to southwest pass to catch all those gaff tops. Last Tuesday I caught gaff top after gaff top after gaf top all over 4 pounds at the new reef (Leon and David Ortemond Reef) located about 1 mile from the Quintana. About 3-4 weeks ago, one boat limited out on specs there. The Leon and David Ortemond Reef is located 29° 44’ 19.7” N, 91° 52’ 45.8” W. Hopefully we'll see some specs back there b4 too much longer.