Offshore Fishing ins and outs
 

I've never offshore fished outside of catching bigeye and dauphin from an FPSO, which was done by jigging spoons we made from the galley and tied onto para cord...

So, I've got a boat now that will allow me to run out a ways on the right days and I would like make a trip or two (with a buddy boat) a year, plus be able to hook some out of towers up if if the time comes. What are the basics when targeting Cobia, mangroves, dauphin, etc... Pole and reel sizes/types, hook sizes/types, line test and type, leaders/rigs, depths, location, and whatever else I'm forgetting.

Not looking for safety advice or finger pointing - I've already got that down.

Be safe...

lots of good info on thehulltruth.

Can't read op's question but I promises there is a lot to learn. And you can die out there. Even after you catch fish. There is always a failure of equipment and your too fare from wallmart. And if u can't magiver a fix u screwed . Even see weed can mess up yo ur equip. Hooks line fail . Fish ar too big to Handel or too small to eat. And god forbid the water police come after,you. You need to know we're u going and how to get back .watch for hazards along the way.

But the fight of you life can be had .and the biggest fish u ever did see can be in pictures with u. Memories of good days with good people and there is something about feeling free and catching food in large packages. You get the good kind of wore out and look like you spent a large amounting atan solan. Without doing a thing. Wemon like to tag along so the nice coconut smell from suntan oil permeates the smell of fresh bait. LOL. And you just feel good on the water.


My idea of ins and outs might differ but with a boat that has cabins there are more as I'm shore you can imagen.

In and outs ya lots to say about that.

Thanks for letting me post on your thread and wish thing were different just I wanted to get that out as I had not had the opera unity to speek about this.

Want to add there are a lot of a holes on land u don't have to deal with while out there.

Offshore Fishing ins and outs
 

Get you a couple good spinning reels like spheros or saragosa and put them on trevelas. Tekotas are a good level wind for snapper, and other small bottom fish, and can also be used for trolling. I like a Tallus rod to put them on. I also like star rods. If you are going to be targeting wahoo or tuna stay away from the level winds. The TLD is a good starter leverdrag and then the sky's the limit on what you can spend

Calcutta 400 on a light shimano trevala rod is a good rig for casting to ling and freelining to mangroves. Like Meaux said, the tekotas are good for snapper. They are a level wind reel. If you don't want a level wind reel, the torium 20 and 30 are good for snapper and small grouper, and can also be used to troll. Torium 20's are also small enough to cast jigs at ling, but gives you a little more drag than a calcutta 400.

Post anytime bro, and I like the coconut oil perk...!

that little nugget of gold right there... No matter what state of lucidity you might be in, is worthy of all the time I have spent reading and re-reading posts on this forum. As opposed to playing candy crush when I'm bored.

Thank you RD!

Ok but requires opisit sex for it to work right.

Very well said. I completely agree. I want to hereby nominate the above for most well written, informative posts of the year! :cheers:

Rule number one if in a single engine boat is NEVER turn your motor off. Only bad things can happen when you kill the motor.

I like to use a citica or something similar spooled with 30 or 50 lb braid for casting to tripletail, ling, and working weedlines. Shimano TLD 25 is a good all around trolling and dropping reel. Ugly stick big water boat rods make some good fairly cheap rods. For mangroves you will need some 20-40 lb fluoro leaders with a hook you can completely hide in your chunk of bait.

I use 4/0 - 6/0 circle hooks.

60 lb line with a flouro leader.

For snapper I use the leaders that you can snap a weight onto the bottom and then 1 or 2 hooks above. Grouper rigs for AJ and Grouper.

Out of G.I. we didn't start catching a lot of snapper until around 150' but the deeper you go the fish DEFINITELY get bigger!

If you PM me your email I'll send you the coordinates of the rigs we have caught Snapper, Ling, Grouper, and AJ at.

Some people use a rig hook but we have limited space on the boat so we use a clorox bottle half filled with water tied to anchor rope. We toss it around the beam we want to be tied to then grab it with the gaff. It may look funny but it works perfect everytime and even allows us to tie up to beams that are vertical where a rig hook would not work.

Don't forget a GAFF!!!

I have a couple standard PENN reel/rod combos from Academy but have also invested in some more high quality set ups since we started catching ling and AJ. We burned up the PENN combos last summer on some 40 lb ling.

You need to be set up heavier than you would expect when rig fishing because you are going to have to crank up the drag and bully them up as fast as you can. If you play with them they will get hung up in the rig and break you off everytime.

Hope this helps.

If you ever need a buddy boat let me know!
I'm always looking to make a 2 boat trip.

Hey mako19 do aj hang out on the bottom?

AJ 's can be just about anywhere in water column. You need to be in about
60-65 feet for snapper, although you can find them closer depending on time of year. They aren't necessarily any bigger the deeper you get. Out of GI, that probably has to do with pressure. Out of Cameron and Freshwater bayou, there are plenty of 20+ lb snapper in 60-70 feet of water.

I have only caught a few AJ but they have hooked all of them near the bottom in 250' of water.

Im no expert by any means.

Just sharing what I have learned from being on the water in the Gulf with rod and reel in my hands.

You may be right, it may be due to pressure, but I am confident that the size of red snapper is DIRECTLY related to water depth out of G.I.

That doesn't mean you wont find ANY big ones closer in. What I mean is that the avergae size of fish we pull up from rigs at 250' is bigger than the average at 150'.

I sure wish I knew where we could catch nice Red snapper in 60'.

Good thread!


What are y'all using for bait?

I got ya, I wasn't trying to argue with you. Just didn't know where the OP was planning on fishing out of.